How to Illustrate Children's Books

Children's Book Illustration

Illustrating children's books is a long process requiring skill, inspiration and time. Here is how to put those three key areas together to create a successful illustration.

Difficulty:

Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Art supplies

1. Graphite Illustration by Alina Bradford

   Choose what type of medium you will use for the illustration. Paper cut-out illustration or bright, colorful dashes of acrylic are usually reserved for happy, energetic, rousing tails. Pastel and water color may be chosen for bedtime stories or moral themes.

2. Choose the appropriate support for the medium. For example, watercolor paper for watercolor, canvas for acrylic or oil and illustration board for experimental paper illustrations.

3. Read the text of the story. Separate the story into its most important segments. Each segment will represent an illustration in the book. If the book is a picture book, you may want to make an illustration for every action, so keep an eye out for verbs in the text.

4. Mock Up by Alina Bradford

   Mock up some rough sketches of each illustration in your sketchbook. Plan each one so that there is a clearly defined focal point, but also try to work surprises into the total illustration so that the eye travels around the picture.

5. Transfer your sketch to the canvas, illustration board or paper that you chose and complete the illustration.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure that your illustrations are child-friendly. Avoid overly scary characters, blood and dark themes.

Resources

• How to Paint Illustrations
• How to Draw Cartoon Facial Expressions
• More on How to Illustrate Children's Books