Character art in novels

Melisande Flamestouch Character Art

A great deal of this borrows from the article I wrote a short time ago; 5 reasons to get a professional cover artist. The same principles apply, but I’ll be going over a few more in this piece. Also deals with similar concepts to my character sheets article.

Why should you draw your characters?

Whether you draw every day, or just like to doodle from time-to-time, drawing is a great form of release. It can also help cement your ideas and give you a visual platform to work from. Think of it as a character sheet – it will help remind you of your character traits.

When it comes to learning, most people benefit from visuals, when you start out writing a novel, you are learning the characters you create. This is very much so if you write character heavy fiction. So, draw some sketches of the character with his/her clothes items, hair colour, etc. It’s a faster method of generating a character sheet.

2 Reasons why character art should be kept well away from your book:

Imagination… .nation…. nation…. nation… ation… ation

Character art, even on the cover can inhibit the reader’s mind’s eye. When I was a young sprout, and Harry Potter was the business; the picture of him on the front always irritated me. I knew what harry potter looked like, and it wasn’t anything like that little fellow on the cover.

People very easily build characters in their head, and so, having a picture of your protagonist can actually weaken this. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but give a person a ten words, and they’ll imagine ten thousand.

Distracting

If you should keep character out away from the cover it goes ten fold for inside the book. I toyed the with the idea of a novel with graphics but after a few trial pages I realized the imagery was just distracting. It draws the reader away from the real content and to the image. Which slows down and jars your audience.

The blogovella project

I am currently working on a novella odyssey that I am releasing piece by piece on this ‘ere blog. Each post has artwork drawn by myself that shows characters or a scene. There are a number of reasons for this.

1. limited time: I have been restricting the entries in the blogovella, trying to keep them short and exciting. Trying not weigh it down with heavy descriptors.
2. The art is a part of it. While I edit my début high-fantasy novel “Sword of Unity” I am writing the novella to keep me writing new content in the world of Etheros. I decided that I also wanted to keep drawing for the duration so I am forcing myself to make a new piece of cover art for each section, each one in a different style.

Have you ever been jarred by a character design on a book? Do you draw your scenes or characters? Where do you sit on this [minor] issue, for or against character art in literature?

Thanks for reading,

Cortez

 

Follower spotlight: theparasiteguy

Each week I will turn the attention to one of my followers. To celebrate theparasiteguy achieving 50 followers; he’s lucky number one.

Like most of us, this fella’s interests include gaming, music and writing. A physics student, he has taken to the wordpress world to further his writing. Unpretentious, and fun to read, he has admitted he wants to build his skills, so he can do his concepts and ideas justice. An admirable trait, and shows true commitment to the craft.

Post Spotlight:

Farhome house – Encounter

A delightful little snippet about a chap named James induction into some sort of parasitic cult. Verb heavy with sparse description it’s a great little piece with a comfy concept.

I love reading new writers with great concepts. Writing is a skill, idea is a talent. It’s the foundation of best-selling authors. Theparasiteguy shows a lot of promise in his concepts and it’s just a matter of his skill catching up.

That said, theparasiteguy, is NOT a bad writer. His style is action driven and easy to read. From reading his bio and many of his posts, I’ve drawn the conclusion that he thinks he’s a lot worse than he actually is. This is an admirable trait in any kind of artists, because you know he’s never going to stop improving!

Post Spotlight:

A collection of bad sci-fi covers

I decided to turn the light on this post because I can’t help but feel my post getting a professional cover artist inspired it.

A better collection of crimes against the art community I haven’t seen. Very funny,

To say ‘theparasiteguy’ is well read would be the understatement of the century. When I wasn’t laughing my moobs off (mereasts, if your a Dylan Moran fan), I couldn’t help but be shocked that he had read so many books with terrible covers.

Post Spotlight:

Stepping into the world of self publishing

The parasite guy is going after e-books for his future reviews. Something, when I start reviewing books, I plan to do. I’m a big proponent of e-books and believe it’s the printing press of our era. In spite of this, I have never read any fiction e-books realeases… I am the ultimate hypocrite. Thanks to parasiteguy, this is going to change.

As a reader, however, I think that independent authors should be given a chance.  It has become increasingly clear to me that many such writers work just as hard – if not harder- than those who have gotten their books out via traditional means.  Furthermore, it must be said that traditional publishers are not necessarily the seal of quality that people think they are.  Ever read a book that was so bad you wondered how it got published?  Exactly.

A truer statement I haven’t seen in a while. Theparasiteguy is not only working to build his craft, but also immersing himself in the community. I think that just about every indie author (if they haven’t already), should take a leaf out of this man’s book and support their competition, so the community may grow as a whole.

The Wrap up:

All in all, get on board because I reckon this kid’s gonna be big. I am really looking forward to his first novel (whether that’s in three months or three years), so I can tell people “hah, I knew him before he was big.”

Head on over theparasiteguy and follow along!

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Follower spotlight will be a regular instalment, if you want to be featured, follow A month from somewhere. I will not ask your permission, but I will never give negative reviews. This section is intended to build the community, not break it!

Thanks for reading

Cortez