Bartc
Well-known member
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I'm having trouble with illustrating my new book. Last book had color photos and diagrams and they did help, plus folks found them appealing. This book is of a different nature and it was suggested that sketches would liven it up and break up the print. I can well appreciate that suggestion, but book illustration isn't one of my skills.
Let me set the scene. First book was a memoir and had a narrative basis running a little over 200 pages. This book is meant as a companion, but it has no narrative underlying structure, rather it is a set of short tales, vignettes running 1 - 3 pages each for about 110 pages.
It was suggested to me that I illustrate the latter with simple or humorous sketches meant to look just like quickies, not finished pieces. I get the concept, just ink lines done quickly, some humorous, some just a pictorial representation of a story element. This I found daunting! I can certainly draw and sketch, either from life or imagination, but doing so from imagination to match a story seems a big step farther.
So I wrestled with my doubts and finally whipped out maybe 60% of what I would need. OK, some do work to my eye, some work but are "so what?", and some just feel too primitive. They're different styles, which is fine by me, so that's not necessarily the issue.
I have yet to come up with another set of illustrations, however, which means that some runs of chapters have pix, while others are very bare. That's a bit of a problem for me in that, even knowing they don't all need a picture and skipping is fine, this is too clustered.
I feel stalled and wonder if I should just give up the illustrating altogether. Any thoughts?
Let me set the scene. First book was a memoir and had a narrative basis running a little over 200 pages. This book is meant as a companion, but it has no narrative underlying structure, rather it is a set of short tales, vignettes running 1 - 3 pages each for about 110 pages.
It was suggested to me that I illustrate the latter with simple or humorous sketches meant to look just like quickies, not finished pieces. I get the concept, just ink lines done quickly, some humorous, some just a pictorial representation of a story element. This I found daunting! I can certainly draw and sketch, either from life or imagination, but doing so from imagination to match a story seems a big step farther.
So I wrestled with my doubts and finally whipped out maybe 60% of what I would need. OK, some do work to my eye, some work but are "so what?", and some just feel too primitive. They're different styles, which is fine by me, so that's not necessarily the issue.
I have yet to come up with another set of illustrations, however, which means that some runs of chapters have pix, while others are very bare. That's a bit of a problem for me in that, even knowing they don't all need a picture and skipping is fine, this is too clustered.
I feel stalled and wonder if I should just give up the illustrating altogether. Any thoughts?