— I · ORIGIN —
How it began.
n 2021 I had two strokes. They took part of my vision, and with it the thing I had done most easily all my life: reading. I was just starting college. A page of dense text — my Bible most of all — became slow, tiring work, and I had to learn to read again, adapting as I went.
What I wanted was the stories I loved back the way I had first met them as a kid: big, slow, full-color, one panel at a time, with the words exactly where I could find them. Nobody was making that. So I started making it. The first folio was Genesis, chapter one — thirty-one verses, King James text set into every frame, word for word, nothing added, nothing skipped.
In the years since, through an MBA, I have built the house, its production lines and the infrastructure to keep publishing for years to come. I did it because I need these books. I kept going because a lot of people struggle with dense text — for any number of reasons — and I think they need them too. Every chapter, every book, every story worth redrawing.
What I wanted was the stories I loved back the way I had first met them as a kid: big, slow, full-color, one panel at a time, with the words exactly where I could find them. Nobody was making that. So I started making it. The first folio was Genesis, chapter one — thirty-one verses, King James text set into every frame, word for word, nothing added, nothing skipped.
In the years since, through an MBA, I have built the house, its production lines and the infrastructure to keep publishing for years to come. I did it because I need these books. I kept going because a lot of people struggle with dense text — for any number of reasons — and I think they need them too. Every chapter, every book, every story worth redrawing.
— Brian McGauley, Drawn From · MMXXVI
— II · METHOD —
From verse to panel.
Every folio follows the same four steps. No shortcuts, no editorial voice inserted between the reader and the source.
I
READ
We begin with the source text in a faithful public-domain English translation. King James for scripture. Butler for Homer. Plutarch's own words for Caesar. Never a summary. Never a synopsis.
II
BLOCK
The text sets the structure. Panel blocking and page count follow the verses — no editorial hand decides what gets a panel and what doesn't.
III
DRAW
Drawn in the house style: black, gold, bone and crimson; halftone and foil; one clear focal point a panel; nothing outside the palette. Layout, color keying and lettering are built directly from the source text, the way a draftsman would block them.
IV
SET
The original text is set onto every panel it inspired, verbatim, in the house type. The scripture always appears. You never have to trust us — you can always read the original, exactly where we drew it.
— III · MANIFESTO —
What we refuse.
Every publisher is defined more by what it won't print than what it will. Here is our list.
- § 01Paraphrase.The original text is set on every panel. No retelling. No “modernized for clarity.” If the verse is awkward, so is the panel.
- § 02Censorship.The stories are what they are. Violence, sex, divinity, horror — if the source contains it, the folio does too. We say what is in a folio; we do not redact it.
- § 03Filler.No bonus content that isn’t in the text. No editor’s notes inside the story. No sidebars explaining what you just read.
- § 04A house style that flattens the sources.One hand draws every line — gold, bone and black — and none of them look alike, because the source sets the world: what is worn, what is built, what is feared. The style is ours; the tone is the book’s.
- § 05A release schedule we can’t honor.We publish a folio when it’s ready. Not before, not instead of another that’s ready first.
Back the press
No ads, no data sold, no venture money. The work is funded by people buying folios — and, if you like, a coffee.
BUY US A COFFEE ↗Opens Buy Me a Coffee, where the press is listed under Imaginarii — Drawn From Publishing is an imprint of Imaginarii. A coffee is a tip, not a purchase: it unlocks nothing and ships nothing.