Illustrating a Children's Book

It always helps to visualize the illustrations for the story that you are writing. To illustrate or not to illustrate? That is the question.

As you know, I did the illustrations for my book SleepyTown. I had a clear idea of what I wanted, when I put the story together. Now, that it is done, would I do anything differently?
Yes, I would. I think that everyone would make changes to their work if they did it again and again.

That might not make sense, but artists often paint the same subject over and over. They do study number one and study number two. Sometimes, they take sections of the painting and paint that section over and over.

I tried that not too long ago. I had painted a Tuscan scene about a month before. It was nice and I liked it. You know how you can crop an image on your computer? I did that. I chose one section and I painted just that section, again. It was interesting. I could not approach it the same way that I did the big canvas. It made me look at it in a whole new light. I liked the results, but it was so different.

Maybe it helps us most, when we take sections of our story and work on just that section. Take one illustration and work on it and do not go to anything else. Try different mediums. Before staying with colored pencils for SleepyTown, I did one illustration in watercolor, one in acrylic, and one in a mixture. I decided on colored pencils because of the simplicity that I wanted it to be.

Just a few minutes ago, I had something come to me. It is concerning illustrating your own book. Have you ever collected a group of books from a publisher and really looked at their books? Does that publisher have a certain style? Can you see it in their published works? Do your illustrations fit that style? In other words, how does your art work compare to the illustrators that they use for their books? If your illustrations do not fit, can you make them fit?

Wow, it is a lot to consider. If you look at it too long, your head will begin to swim. You will feel dizzy, and you just might want to scream. Life would be so much easier, if everyone followed the same rules, but...it would be boring.

This is a short post today. I have a lot to do. I have a new children's story that I am trying to finish writing. It is about cows and I have to keep "moooving" along. Sorry, that was sick, huh? I could go back and delete it, but I kept running my mouth.

Drop me a message. I would like to hear from you.