Story of the illustrations     History is..      Walking to Waltham Abbey    History in stitches

Home
The design process
Power of pictures
Review
Books
History is
Reconstructing
Our Tapestry
1066 Timetable
Walking to Waltham Abbey
about us

 

The Design Process

In brief, the process of illustrating, more or less followed this pattern:

bulletIdeas – Reading through the manuscript, already roughly subdivided into pages, and noting down perhaps two, three or four ideas for accompanying illustrations, depending on the range of the text.
bulletResearch – books, Google images, material from Charles’ own research, into both this era and the Battle of Fulford in particular, in order to inform my concepts for each subject (and provide a few clues as to the historical detail).
bulletDevelopment drawings - some initial sketches for each noted illustration. These varied wildly in number, with unfamiliar subject matter receiving far more extensive treatment (I drew a lot of galloping war horses) than, say, character pieces where I had already arrived at a ‘look’ for a particular historical figure.
bulletDrafting out a ‘final’ drawing for each illustration onto heavy cartridge paper. I chose this medium over watercolour paper chiefly because of the volume of drawings there were, but also because the quality of the bleached paper presented an easy drawing surface and lent a vibrancy to the watercolour, when applied, that is sometimes lost on more textured, absorbent papers.

bulletInk outline – defining the pencil drawing with black fine-liner . This ensured all the details I wanted from the sketch were visible before I began applying the paint, and allowed me to then remove the (sometimes a little messy…) pencil from behind the image to give a cleaner line.
bulletWatercolour painting – my absolute favourite bit, but quite time-consuming; the nature of the paint (as anyone who has used watercolours will doubtless be aware) requires the image to be built up in stages (unless you’re aiming for an effect, like slightly ethereal underwater luminescence, perhaps – for which there was no call in this particular project…).

bulletThere had been a suggestion, at the fine-liner stage, that we might consider colouring the line drawings in Photoshop but it was clear from the test pieces (using an illustration which didn’t make the ‘final cut’) that this wouldn’t provide an adequate finish:
Watercolour Painted image Computer painted image
bulletScanning and ‘tweaking’ – all the images then had to be scanned to create digital versions that could be inserted into the digital book file. Most of the finished images seemed to have survived the process in reasonably good shape, but there were a few over which I had to wave the Photoshop wand in order to arrive at an image that I felt would work for the book layout. Also, as most of the painting took place over the relatively warm, dry summer months (no, really), the atmospheric conditions demanded that I work quickly in order to prevent unsightly paint/water lines appearing where they weren’t wanted – this wasn’t always possible (for a number of, largely uninteresting, reasons) so the Photoshop stage was an important one. Photoshop was also used to remove the ‘paper-coloured’ space around the finished image and give a clean edge that wouldn’t show up in the printed book - although the cartridge paper used was ‘white’, it had no chance of matching the shiny, brilliant-white of the digital blank page!

Interesting links

bullet Battle of Fulford
bullet Battle of Stamford Bridge
bullet Battle of Hastings
bullet English Heritage
bullet Battlefields Trust
bullet Young Archaeologists Club (CAB)
bullet York Archaeological Trust
bullet Regia re-enactors
bullet Viking re-enactors
bulletOnline documents

Events

bullet Riccall Rampage 24 July 2010
bullet Jorvik Festival (there will be another one in 2011!)
bullet Fulford Festival 2010
bullet Festival of archaeology 2010

 

 

 

 

An Illustrated History of 1066
about us
contact
glossary

Site written and maintained by Chas Jones & Amanda Pollard

All material is copyright of the authors -2009. For any permissions contact WritersPrintShop.com

 

read review

last updated 20 Julyy 2010