Stipple Illustration

Stipple illustration builds images from the accumulation of individual marks — dots, short strokes, fine hatching — rather than from continuous lines or filled areas. Each mark contributes a small amount of ink; the aggregate produces the illusion of tone, volume, and texture. The technique is centuries old, visible in Renaissance engravings and nineteenth-century scientific illustration, and it persists in contemporary form most famously in the Wall Street Journal's portrait style. For the You On AI Wiki's illustration system, stipple is the default technique because its discipline — black ink, transparent background, no gray tones — produces source assets that behave predictably under CSS filter transformations. An illustration with gray areas would respond unpredictably to inversion and hue rotation; a pure-black stipple on transparency responds deterministically.