TSS - Illustration: Make or Break

Illustrations: Make or Break

An Artwork and Illustration article by Claire Kerry

Book Illustrations. As described on the Artwork page, there are three kinds of book illustrations, those by an artist, those by the author, or none at all. And therefore there must be three kinds of book- those with illustrations that work, those with illustrations that don't and those with none at all.
Of course, all books (unless they are exceptionally boring and/or unique) have at least one illustration, the Front Cover! This of course is a very important illustration because although the phrase goes, 'Never judge a book by it's cover', we strange humans decided to apply it to other strange humans instead of the item actually mentioned in the phrase (that's Books for those of you not paying attention!). Unfortunately, the first thing most people will do when they pick up a book is look at the cover, and if they are not impressed by it they will most likely put it back down again. Even more unfortunately, the next thing a typical reader will do is turn the book over and read the blurb. Then judge it from the blurb. Unless the reader is of the few that simply pick up a book and read it they will most likely put the book back down if not impressed by Title, Author, Front Cover or Blurb (I myself am speaking here as one of the guilty majority). My point being that Illustrations are important things in any book, even if it's just the front cover.
But back to the matter at hand...
Illustrations can do one of three things: Aid, hinder or completely ruin the story. An example of good use of illustrations in books is the Deptford Mice and Deptford Histories series' by Robin Jarvis. Jarvis does the drawings himself and is clever by not overloading us with artwork. Only one picture per chapter, each picture takes up one single page. The drawings centre on the characters (which is a good thing because the backdrops are generally boring things like forest bushes or brick walls). The characters themselves are animals and Jarvis is clever by not describing them too much so you can look at the pictures to see what they look like. The animals in the story are anthropomorphised so the pictures are anthropomorphised. And they work. Read the stories to see what I'm getting at, or alternatively, just pull a copy off the shelf in your local library and flick through to find the pictures (a favourite hobby of mine is to show the pictures to my sister and listen to her silly captions she makes for them. She'd have absolutely no interest in anything I read otherwise).
Another example of pictures aiding the story is small pictures at the beginning of chapters (just over or under the chapter title). These can show a scene, a setting or a character and so long as they are good they work really well. This is because you can use them in long novels with lots of chapters where a picture per chapter or lots of pictures can get a little annoying (for readers and for the artist). They also work well because they don't distract from the story. You (well, I certainly) only really give them a glance. if it shows a setting, it either enhances the setting or you ignore it and stick to your own interpretation. The same if it shows a character or scene. Big pictures would catch your eye too much and make you believe that "THIS IS WHAT THE CHARACTER/SCENE/SETTING LOOKS LIKE! SO THERE!" The most obvious example (to me) is the Tales of Redwall, where the technique works very well. As I like to be artistic, I would use one of these options to illustrate my story (and draw them myself, of course!).
Now, pictures that hinder a story. This means that they can be distracting and annoying but don't ruin the book entirely. The best example I can find of this is Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke. In this book there are pictures at the beginning of each chapter, which is all well and good and works well for that story. But alongside these and the actual text are other pictures of varying sizes. And this means that the art is now shouting at me (example above...). Some of the illustrations are good- in fact most of them are- but really, a reader has imagination, so let them use it when it comes to a novel like Dragon Rider.
I have never (luckily) read a book with illustration that completely ruins a story, but think about this example. I have only read book one of the Inheritance Trilogy by Christopher Paolini (Eragon). In fact, I didn't even read it all the way through. I only got to the end when I listened to it on a CD audio book. The description in that book is overloaded. There is way too much of it. In fact, without all that description and twaddle about pointless things like saddle-making and travelling I might have managed to plough my way through all of that book. But imagine this- Eragon with illustrations. Not big ones dotted everywhere, simple one-per-chapter or picture-at-beginning-of-chapter. It would just be too much. Much too much. Plus, it would make an already annoyingly thick book even thicker. A similar argument applies to Harry Potter books 4-7. Despite actually being very good (unlike Inheritance), pictures would simply be too much.

Which brings me to my conclusion. illustrations can be very good or they can be very bad. Think before you start doodling for your future bestseller. Those doodles may ultimately be your downfall!

Claire Kerry