Lessons illustrating a children's book for the first time
Earlier this year I worked on a big, intensive illustration project: creating the illustrations for a 32-page children’s book. It was the first major digital painting project and the first children’s book I’ve worked on so far.
I work in traditional drawing/painting mediums a lot, so working in digital was a bit of a learning experience.
Somehow, until you do something, some things that should be obvious aren’t obvious, even if you read about them.
Needless to say, I learned a lot just by going through the process of illustrating the children’s book. I had done research prior to starting, but of course, I couldn’t possibly do everything right the first time around. Doubly so when I had little to no prior experience with a pen and tablet, digital painting, or children’s book illustration.
So here’s a short list of some of the things I learned:
Create a Character Sheet
A character sheet is a page of drawings of the character in different poses. This is helpful for reference so that you can be consistent throughout the book and have knowledge of how your character looks.
Unfortunately, I did not do this until about halfway through, meaning that I had to fix earlier drawings to be more consistent.
Save Character Color Palettes
This should have been obvious, but with the uncertainty and newness of illustrating so many illustrations digitally, again, I didn’t finalize colors until after the first spread of drawings.
So, next time I’ll save a color palette alongside the character sheet.
Choose Style Carefully
One lesson I learned the hard way is to carefully consider the amount of work illustrating in style will be. For this particular children’s book I chose a painted, flat, semi-realistic style with no line art.
That was a mistake. The style was far too intensive to complete in the amount of time allotted and to the high bar I had wanted to achieve. In the end, the quality suffered because I just didn’t have the time (which was really, really disappointing as an artist).
The style could have been simpler (it was a children’s book after all), but I also learned that keeping backgrounds simple is a great idea. (That is, unless it is a necessary part of the style, and you have the time to do it properly). Simplifying the backgrounds would have given me more time to focus on the characters and actions.
Exaggerate
Yeah, I’ll admit that most of the character poses in the illustrations turned out looking stiffer than I intended. The sketches looked good, and I was happy with them—but the final art looked stiff.
So what happened?
The problem was that when I made the initial sketches I didn’t exaggerate enough.
If you don’t exaggerate the pose when you make your sketch, by the time you complete the drawing it could look static. Through the art process, the blockiness and shapes often tend to get rounded out. When that happens, the pose loses a lot of its “life”.
The other thing I didn’t exaggerate was the silliness of the drawings. A children’s book should be silly, colorful, and fun, but admittedly, it was only during the latter half of the illustrations that I began to push in that direction.
Use Digital to Your Advantage
Perhaps it’s just because I come from using traditional art mediums, but I certainly didn’t use the flexibility digital offers to its full advantage.
Things like using separate layers rather than painting the whole illustration on a single layer, batching the character drawing, and using perspective grids should have been obvious, but I had to “discover” their advantages in the process instead.
So, in summary, I learned a lot. I’m glad I went through the process and finished illustrating the book (finishing and not giving up is an achievement in itself).
True, I shouldn’t expect to know everything the first time illustrating a children’s book, but these were admittedly simple things I missed which made the process harder and the results not as great. Next time, though, I can apply these lessons and do better. :)