Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Research and Pinterest

Researching books is one of the best time-sucks on the internet. I can get over-involved in finding the layout of a castle, information on medieval garb of Irish clans, and clan mottos. The list can be endless...but I've noticed the best one is the character search.

I have a strict limit on the character search - no more than 30 minutes per week. I'm not looking to cast my characters in a movie; rather, I'm trying to find a pair of eyes that match what's in my head, or the exact color of my heroine's hair when she's drying it by the fire. This is more difficult than one might think...matching up my mind with reality is sometimes incredibly frustrating.

This week, I've found two images. I was advised this weekend that a better way to gather all my images is to use Pinterest, instead of my hard drive...I'm going to try that out this week. It's one of those programs that I signed up for but never used; however, my Facebook feed is full of neat images (mostly food...my friends really love food) and ideas that I would never have thought of myself (but I'm pretty sure they'd eventually show up in my Martha Stewart Twitter feed).

Here are my two images. One of them is for the eyes of this guy, which isn't as grainy on my computer as it is here:

(I have no copyright information, but if anyone has some,
please send it along so I can post. It was from a Google search and the website no longer exists.)

It's not about the color...it's about the message they're conveying. Depends on your mood which message that is, so I'll let you play around with that one.

The second image is for my heroine's hair color. I have her hair portrayed as this:
(Copyright haircolors2013.us.)


And have the hair kind of looking the way this does - different colors, maybe a bit darker, though - when in firelight:
(Copyright haircolors2013.us.)

See how it still doesn't match up to my imagination? Frustrating. Do you use Pinterest? Does it help, or do you find it too distracting? Comment below!

1 comment:

  1. Not a Pinterest user, but I highly recommend Evernote for this sort of thing. You can save images to each note along with your thoughts and your notes are fully accessible from all devices. You can also return to your note and add or edit at any time. The only negative I see is it's not for social networking.

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