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It's Friday and the world continues to fall apart, so I thought I'd distract people with some PROCESS. Here are three stages of the Inca map from History Atlas, and I shall bore you all with them further on the comments below.
#illustration #childrensbooks #history #inca
#illustration #childrensbooks #history #inca
The first image is a tiny sketch I used to talk about the structure of the map with my editor and art directors. The Incas lived in and around the Andes, so it made sense to draw this as a vertically oriented map, with a band of sea on the left, then jungle and finally mountains.
It's a genuinely minuscule drawing, 4 or 5 cm tall, and I have deep appreciation for the poor people that have to imagine whatever will come of this when it turns into a huge illustration.
Once we're all happy with this, it's time to bring all the research we did into the map: people, places, activities, the geography of a place, its climate, etc. These all help me shape the maps and work out what goes where.
I usually jump from the tiny sketches straight into a proper map, but in this case I was asked to draw something more detailed for a book fair. This is the second image, still a rough, but this time in ink and much larger, incorporating some solid (ish) facts.
At this point all sorts of little ideas that are peripheral to the map but fundamental for my (and I hope the readers') enjoyment start to pop up. Things like the mountain roads filled with llama trails, the seals on the coastline and the birds on the mountains.
Now we go to the final map, image 3. I draw everything on paper, with ink brushes and pens, then scan and paint it digitally. There's a lot of detail on the ink line already, but in this case colour also helps making everything easier to understand, a sense of depth, time, etc.
I try to find visual references from primary sources as much as possible, but what makes it drawing these fun is working out how to depict people in ways that make them feel more than just placeholders for historical facts. They have to be happy, grumpy, sly, confused, etc.
This really helps when writing. Describing someone's character or a relationship between family members can feel quite reductive in a short paragraph of text, but it's easily done with the right expression and movement.
After it's all done I still look at it and find lots of things I'd like to improve, I always end up drawing a page full of little things (like the whale tails, the little chaps on boats, etc) and place them around the maps at the end.
I find it fundamental that the maps - however stylised their appearance - feel like real places, with lots of people and creatures going about their business, interacting with each other, etc.
The maps have to be enjoyable to explore, get lost in, discover stuff. That's as important as all the facts and whatnot; if someone is captivated by these worlds they'll want to spend more time in them, in this book and lots of other places. This is it, good Friday everyone.
