Drawing from memory for a book

[MurrayG]

Hi folks. I am writing a "book", mostly just for my grown up kids andd grandkids of my life on our farm as a kid. The farm has long gone to plantation forest mores the pity. It is now also surrounded by open cut coal mines. My memories, although funny at times, record a past way of life. I am trying to sketch from memory various scenes of the farm and so on. I see it - but my perspective and obviously accuracy is off. Any tips from you bookies". I guess nobody is going to question accuracy, but , well, I care somewhat. The few Photos I have are not super helpful to mesh with the scenes I am contemplating.

 

[MurrayG]

I have thought of one thing. In a book, one is limited to the available area eg in a paperback and detail of any sketch etc. With an e-Book, I guess there is potentially more space, but even so, that depends on the viewers reader (phone or tablet).
So I think I need to limit the scope and detail of any drawing. I am OK with 9x5" pastels, pen is a different matter.
Any other thoughts or suggestions?

 

[joe1It]

it's a wonderful idea, I think he will really like to see it.

I am layman and I don't know how to draw from memory, I don't know if what I say can be useful but I thought, for the figures, maybe to move the figure, if this app can help.


thinking about it, once, I downloaded a free app,
Poselt, looking on your mobile, an app to try. In this app
there is a mannequin, which you can move, maybe it can be useful, maybe for next drawings to try pose. Nome app is Poselt, anyway on the play store, I wrote poses figures, I think for that or something like that

it's about photos, I don't know if it can give a hint, if you have any doubt, compare your photos, with similar images, if google finds something useful, with the photo search, putting your photo in search on photo

 

[ZenDruid]

Tighten the framing of your illustrations. A picture of a chicken pecking around the garden can convey the sense of farm as well, or better, than a wide landscape layout of the homestead and barnyard. Likewise show the farm dog, horse, Dad's pickup, etc. Readers imaginations fill in a world of details.

 

[MurrayG]

Thanks Zen. I also just relaized I can do drawings, pastel, pen, watecolour etc or whatever on a suitable size (about A4 ish) and scale them down. But still keep the composition "simple" to allow for loss of detail etc.

 

[Donna T]

I wish you success with your book, Murray. It's a wonderful idea! In addition to Zen's excellent advice I was wondering if you could do a map at the beginning of the book to show the lay-out of the farm. Maybe that would give the readers an idea of where certain things existed in relation to others without you having to illustrate every detail. It wouldn't need to be super accurate; just based on your memory of the notable landmarks.

 

[MurrayG]

Hi Donna, fortunately I have the original map lodges (hand drawn) but accurate from when my parent bought the land. There are other bits and bobs and a few precious photos. But - yup its down to me since The folks passed on. Thinking aloud here has helped. I'm 60+ pages in so far Im sure many have more poignant tales, but this will be good to do I think. I would love to find old satellite photos of the area compared to the luna disater that is the region now from mining ...... heartbreaking.

 

[laika]

I also just relaized I can do drawings, pastel, pen, watecolour etc or whatever on a suitable size (about A4 ish) and scale them down. But still keep the composition "simple" to allow for loss of detail etc.

And I guess it's an obvious thing to say, but be sure to keep your work in a proportion to the size of the book page.

 

[laika]

I would love to find old satellite photos of the area compared to the luna disater that is the region now from mining ...... heartbreaking.

Sometimes governments (local and national) have collections of old aerial photo fly-overs for mapping purposes - sometimes even in stereo! In the US, the USGS would sell 9x9 inch prints of areas that had been mapped over the years.

 

[laika]

...I downloaded a free app,
Poselt, looking on your mobile, an app to try. In this app
there is a mannequin, which you can move...

Hey, Joe! I had never heard of such an app as Poseit, so thanks for sharing that. It looks like it could be very useful

 

[Artyczar]

As for an ebook, I think there is a way to force the viewer's layout in one or the other formats (.pub format or .mobi, I forget which it is), but it may take a professional to do this. One of them you can get close, and the other varies a little.

I tried this on my own once and it was super complicated and took a big learning curve to do it. Otherwise, you can make it look any way you want as a PDF, but then the book won't be "interactive," meaning clicking on the images won't open them larger, and words won't be clickable for definitions, or even be links to other places in the chapters to move around in the reader, which is kind of the great thing about ebooks.

But, if this is not for mass production (it's just for your family?), a PDF could be a lot easier.

 

[OliveOyl]

Hi Murray. This is a great idea, I think. I used this app once to do a little photo book for my kid. It was pretty easy and must have been affordable or else I wouldn’t have done it.

https://www.lulu.com/

I actually created illustrations for a toddler activity book published by Simon& Schuster back in the day. So, should I have any helpful advice to offer? Not really.

But…I would make sure, as others have mentioned, to draw the illustrations as close to the finished size as you can. (My book illustrations were chunky marker lines that got reduced down and ended up looking like skinny pen and ink lines). Then, take a picture or scan each illustration as a jpeg and store them on your computer. Then, just follow the links in the app which will tell you how to upload the pictures from your computer into their layout. I think you can add text, and choose your paper, color, binding and quantity. There’s an e-book option as well.

Maybe you’re already doing all this on another app?
Anyway, good luck.
And I hope you show us your progress…

 

[Artyczar]

I have also used Lulu before and have found it to be the cheapest and not bad quality at all. In fact, it's comparable to others that charge more, and it's great if you can't order a bunch at once. You also get a discount if you order more than 25.

 

[MurrayG]

Hi Olive and Arty, I am using Scrivener to write the book. Its really well set up to organize and write novels etc. You can include images and complie the book in several formats, epub, pdf, ebbook etc. I am at 75 pages, 25000 words and twice that to go. I have tested some images and drawing, it should work. Just neeed to plane for clear drawing etc. Thanks for all the tips.

 

[Artyczar]

I used Scrivener to write a very long book and swear by it. I think it's a godsend and may even help one to be able to write a book that couldn't write one otherwise. Good for you!