How To Be a Children's Book Illustrator

As a part of this journey into the field of illustration I recently joined a new online class - How To Be a Children's Book Illustrator (HTBACI), a class built and taught by Mark Mitchell. It's been a motivating experience thus far and I am really excited about the things I will be learning there paired with my continued work at DTO which is a fabulous website so deep with video instruction that I think I will happily spend years as a member.

What I enjoyed this week at HTBACI was the sharing of information by both Mark and the other students of the online community. This week I watched a number of inspiring video clips and articles.

Here are a few and what I took from them.

A video of Alicia Padron painting one of her lovely watercolor characters. I was surprised to find her use so much pencil to shade her character after it was painted. It worked so well!




An article entitled "Why We're Still in Love with Picture Books" by Allyn Johnston and Marla Frazee which speaks to the future of picture books and why we will always want them around - the impact they have on us and our relationships with the children we read them to.

“As we share the words and pictures, the ideas and viewpoints, the rhythms and rhymes, the pain and comfort, and the hopes and fears and big issues of life that we encounter together in the pages of a book, we connect through minds and hearts with our children and bond closely in a secret society associated with the books we have shared. The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud — it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony.”



Members of HTBACI also had the opportunity to watch an interview Mark did with an illustration duo - Jeff Crosby and Shelley Ann Jackson. They talked about their experience as students and getting in to the business, shared some of the books they have published and the process they went through - the research, trying to get the books published etc... as well as offering some advice for those just starting out. Some of the take-aways for me were draw all the time - go to figure drawing classes and draw on the street. Draw what you love and make sure to include those subjects you are passionate about in your portfolio as publishers will ask you to draw then things that they see in your portfolio (if you want to draw dragons, makes sure to incl those kind of pieces in your portfolio). Join a crit group, go to conferences and don't be shy - network with the presenters as well as other illustrators, you never know what work can come from those important connections.

...so there are some tidbits of learning for the week. Not bad eh??!