My first illustrated books used photographic illustrations. This seemed the easy way to do them. Reality set in quickly.
Types of Books
My science activity books use photographic illustrations for the simple reason that these show what I am talking about. They show the steps of the Investigations.
In “The Pumpkin Project”, I have pictures of people with their prize winning pumpkins. A drawing wouldn’t work.
When I wrote “My Ozark Home”, I was showing the hills and pastures of my home. Drawings, no matter how good, wouldn’t be as good.
Photograph or Drawing?
I am not the best photographer. Some of the pictures for my books took many, many tries before I got them right.
This is a problem with using photographic illustrations. Wind blows plants. Animals take off. Investigations need too many hands to do the work and take the pictures.
Drawings might be easier as the illustrator can plan them out. That raises the question of how good the artist is.
“For Love of Goats” had all the text done. So did “The Little Spider” and “Waiting for Fairies”. These books needed drawings, not photographs.
Desperation
I hated seeing these books sit there. Some books will never get done as they aren’t good enough. That wasn’t the case with these.
Armed with the knowledge I am a goat keeper, I decided to try doing the goat illustrations. Only those who know goats, can really draw goats.
Doing these illustrations gave me enough confidence to illustrate the two picture books. What I found out is that each book needed a different approach.
Melding Watercolor, Camera and Computer
All of my illustrations begin as photographs or watercolors. None of these is ready to put straight into a book.
Photographic illustrations must be cropped, maybe enhanced, definitely resized. Watercolors are also cropped, mistakes corrected and resized. The end result is a book illustration.
