Foreign Translations - Issues with Text

The final, must-have-it-all-done deadline for my urban sketching people book is August 21st and I am delighted (and relieved) to say that everything is on track to be ready in plenty of time. Cue round of applause...

The whole timing thing has been a tad tricky though. I am used to the world of picture book publishing, where I can predict pretty accurately how long things will take me at each stage, but the planning, writing and illustration of this book has been totally different. With no previous experience, it was impossible to know how long I'd need for any of it, which has made it very hard for me to plan my time this year, particularly with weaving it around other projects. 

All a wee bit stressful, especially as, I must confess, I am a bit of a control-freak (ask John). 

One last-minute job I've just sorted, was to find some extra images from European sketchers. This is an interesting ploy by my publisher. Other sketchers who have done books will tell you that there is a big issue with having text on your drawings: it creates problems with foreign co-editions, because the handwritten text can't be translated. Now, if you know my work, you will know I use quite a lot of text...

The discussion started early on, when I wrote a section on how to add value to your drawings by writing snippets of overheard conversation, or any other elements which seem pertinent to the moment. I often like to record incidents (see above), sounds and smells (see below) as an intrinsic part of the image, to better conjure the slice of time, or the place I am recording. 

It was obvious the text needed to stay in place for sketches in this chapter of the book, but then I realised that it would look slightly odd if, having recommended the technique, there was no hand-written text to be seen anywhere else.

My team at Quarto had a bit of a think. My editor said we might be able to get away with keeping English text on my sketches, if we also had lots of other work with handwritten text in a range of other languages. I had already included some foreign language text on the work of guest sketchers - one of my all-time favourite people-sketchers is Marina Grechanik from Israel, who uses loads of text:

But the foreign sales team said that the translation issue is more to do with Europe than anywhere else. So I went on the hunt. It was not easy: most urban sketchers don't feature people much and those who do, don't usually use text. I found several brilliant music ones from a website link someone sent me, like this one by Nicolas Barberon:

But I needed more variety of subject matter. In desperation, I put up messages on various Facebook groups. It worked! 

The wonderful thing was that they came in from lots of sketchers who weren't necessarily well known outside their own country. From the outset, I wanted to feature less high-profile sketchers in the book, alongside the old favourites like Marc Holmes and Inma Serrano. The sketch above is by Enrique Flores, the one below is one by Juan Linares and the bottom one is by Ana Rafful.

The only remaining difficulty was finding space to fit these extra images in, when the book is already pretty much written and the sketches for inclusion already chosen. A bit of last-minute jiggery-pokery was needed. 

Some of the European sketches have been substituted for guest ones I chose previously, some have been squeezed into relevant chapters. We also dropped an idea I was going to include and instead created a new spread, looking more generally at how urban sketching works, where I can talk about the brilliant way the movement has pulled together people from around the globe. 

I am expecting another batch of layouts any day, the latest version of the whole book, which will help me to see any holes, where bits of text are needed, and give me the chance to make any amends before we go to proofing stage. I've seen most of it already, in bits and bobs, but this is the first time I have seen the whole thing together.