Guide to Illustrating a Children’s Book
One of the biggest challenges that Children’s books writers come across is coming up with illustrations. When you are in such a situation, you might consider getting a professional who will take care of illustrations.
When you want to write a book, come up with the book first in your head. It would be best if you had that time where you go through the creative process first to build the momentum. This will help in developing a book that is inspirational and amazing. The book will be authentic since you will have had enough time to think about it.
In this post, you will learn essential steps to illustrate a children’s book.
Identify good inspiration sources
Are you writing a book for the first time?
If this is the case, identify where you will be deriving your inspiration.
Some of the best places to derive inspiration would be award-winning picture books and your favorite artists. Buy some of the latest children’s books so that you can learn about some of the latest trends in the market. When writing the book, focus on the skill you are good at. This can be graphics design, stick figures, watercolors, or any other technique.
Come up with a story idea
This will be the first step to writing your book when you have a story that you would like to tell. Your childhood, environment, or career can inspire the story. As long as the story is relevant to children and inspirational to them, you can develop the story and come up with it for your children’s book.
The next great thing will be drawing illustrations you wish to use and characters for your storyline. You can also take the help of Children’s book illustrators from digital illustration agencies such as Advocate Art. Create an outline of the book, and this is where you will get the flow of the story. After this, move to develop sketches in the book as you go.
You can proceed to write the first draft of the book; at this stage, you need not be perfect with the book because you will have time to edit and rewrite the book over and over. Proceed to get the word count of the book and rewrite it as many times as possible. This will come a long way in helping you create the final product.
Develop a character that children can relate
There is always the main character when it comes to writing children’s books. Take some time when developing this character and learn how best to draw them under different expressions or situations. When creating the main character, you need to come up with the continuity for the whole story. This is important for young readers to learn about the storyline.
At this stage, you have the storyline and the characters for your story. To make the book a reality, you can put together a mock book where you will have the story written on the pages you intend and sketch the characters accordingly. This will be best done the traditional way, and it will help picture the book as it should be.
The cover
After you are done with the crucial aspects of the book, you need to come up with an eye-catching cover. This will deliver the story’s mood and attract children and parents to have your book in their library. One of the things that will make your cover pop is hand lettering. This assists in giving a blend between the illustrator’s work and the design of the book. Look out for hand-lettering brushes and guidelines to help you develop some of the best covers for your book. If you are not good at hand-lettering, you can consider going for fonts that will deliver the look and feel or hire someone who can provide this for you.
Conclusion
With these guidelines, you can be sure that you will be close enough to publish your book or have the book ready. The only thing that will be left will be getting distribution for your book. With this guide, you will be out of the woods to illustrate your children’s book.
