With any creative venture, there are many ways to accomplish the end goal. The main reason people do not publish their children’s book is that the whole process seems daunting, and thinking about choosing an illustrator can be frustrating.
For three years, I wanted to try doing my own illustrations, but I was scared, right? Two years ago, I created some ideas and practiced three or four pages. Finally, this summer, I took a leap! For two years, I studied children’s illustrators, checked out their books, watched YouTube tutorials, signed up for online classes, and asked others for advice.
I love scrapbooking and making collages. I wanted to try mixed-media illustrating. Sometimes called collage illustrating where one uses paint, markers, paper, and ephemera to create illustrations. I wanted to try water color, scrapbooking paper, and pages from old books.
Here is a list of things to consider if you are a beginning illustrator:
- Follow your favorite artists. Check out their books at the library.
- Decide your book size and use the correct dimensions for your illustrations.
- Pick your color palette
- Know your characters
- Sketch your illustrations first
- Make a book dummy or several
- Paint the background
- Add characters
- Take classes. I found informative classes on Domestika.com
For one scene, I painted a miniature of the background several times before I got it right. For a particular moon scene, I could not get it right. I finally stepped away from it for a few days, and then came back to it. I worked ahead on other scenes.
This is a video I watched a billion times trying to get mine right @anna_n_studio. Practice, practice!
Below is a fail; one of my terrible moon landscape tries.
Later, when scanning your illustrations, use quality settings set at 300 DPI. This setting provides the best quality without going overboard on file size.
One of my favorite children’s mixed-media illustrators is Carin Berger. In an interview, she disclosed that she first draws very intricate dummies. Then, she uses vellum for tracing and then she cuts out her figures. She might have five or more cutouts before she decides which one to use.
Below is one of her spreads from her book In The Night Garden.
Here is more from her interview: “And then I just use…really rudimentary materials. It’s old ephemera. So, I collect stuff, and I love that they come with these stories built in. So, some of them are really old, from the 1800s, and they’re ledger books from an old grocery store. Some of them are letters. And again, I just love the poignancy of them having this kind of mystery of where they came from. And then some of them are J. Crew catalogs, which, unfortunately, J. Crew has stopped making them, or magazines or something that I find on the street that just has a good number on it.”
“I’m not a hoarder, but I’m a bit of a collector of things, an archivist…Then I just use scissors and an exacto knife and white glue.” (Carin Berger Talks About Her Stunning New Picture Book ‘In the Night Garden’ by By Bianca Schulze).
Another amazing mixed-media illustrator is Fiona Woodcock. Talk about creativity. She uses hand-cut rubber stamps, stencils, BLO pens, colored pencils, acrylic paint, and oil pastels, among others.
I love reading about how others create! Don’t rule out mistakes. Sometimes that’s when I received the most creative energy and new ideas!
Be patient with yourself; illustrating your own children’s book is not easy, but rewarding.
Being creative brings great satisfaction and who knows, you might unleash your potential to create something amazing!
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