As an author/illustrator, people often ask me if I prefer writing or drawing. I usually reply that they are both very different, and that I just enjoy making the change when I’ve been doing one of them for a long time. But the real truth is, I do have a preference. And it has crept up over the years and taken me by surprise.
I have just finished the illustrations for Dan and the Caverns of Bone (see above for a taste of what these look like). I found it difficult in ways I can hardly describe to those who haven’t spent hours squinting close range at wayward ink lines and then transforming them into pixels in order to do it all again digitally. It’s like a war fought between a man and his materials, waged on the scale of a postage stamp, no prisoners taken and the ‘do not disturb’ sign for free. There has got to be another way. Something that involves less squinting, at least.
And yet I do like the finished result. Somehow it’s worth the cramps and eye strain. It’s just that it hasn’t escaped my notice that while writing the word ‘elephant’, say, is the work of a moment, drawing the damn thing takes an hour and forty roughs, plus coffee breaks. When a writer writes ‘then the goblin army swarmed over the hill’, the scene is set and he can move on. The illustrator, on the other hand, has to cancel his social life for a week.
Of course, I know writing isn’t easy. It’s not the word ‘elephant’ that counts, but what the elephant is doing and why. But I hope no one begrudges me my moment of moan as I ease out of ‘illustrator’ gear for one project and shift into ‘writer’ for the next. And shift is the right word. Today I covered more story in words than I can do in a week of pictures. Though so far I’ve managed to avoid throwing in a gratuitous herd of elephants, just because I can.
Good points. And good to remind people to appreciate how long a good illustration takes to create in real terms.
I like to mix my drawing with writing – something about the traction, feeling like I’m moving somewhere with one of them that pulls the other along….but I think they’re different languages, really, and there are things I can say in pictures that I couldn’t in words, and vice versa. But elephants, there’s always room for more elephants, get throwing them!
Yes, agreed — graphic storytelling in comics feel like something else again.
And I’ve just realised, there IS an elephant in my new writing project! Can’t escape the little blighters.
Agreed. But the other way round. I find your description of ‘the struggle’ perfect for my writing process. It doesn’t come naturally and every word is a painful struggle. Drawing is much, much easier.
You’re right about time discrepancies though. I had one in my most recent project. The writer had written an illustration description of a huge aerial ballet involving dozens of unique one-off flying machines, piloted by innumerable (clearly identified) passengers wearing distinctive original highly ornamented fancy dress.
It would have taken weeks just to design the participants.
I drew something else instead.
Quite right too! God, I’ve had so many moments like that. In one picture book I was asked to draw ‘a bush in the distance with hundreds of ladybirds on it’. I suggested that moving the bush to the forground might be helpful…
Ha.
I sigh whenever I read the words, ‘street scene’ or ‘crowd’ in a brief.