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How to Become a Child Book Illustrator
Being a child book illustrator has a lot in common with being a journalist. You both may have wildly imaginative, "signature" styles. However, your success depends on producing work only on the subjects your editors want, when they want it. Guess what? You're on assignment. Do You Have The Appropriate Talent?
I'm not asking if you can draw or paint. I'm asking if your artwork is suitable for children.
For example, H.R. Giger (who designed the monsters in the Alien movie series) does incredible work. However, a monster in a child's book doesn't need to be that scary. Throw in the sexual suggestiveness of his work and you wouldn't have a children's book using his illustrations, you'd have a lawsuit.
Otherwise, child book publishers are looking for nearly all drawing and painting styles-the more distinctive, the better.
Your Role
There's a reason why children's books require illustrations. Although children have incredible imaginations, most haven't seen what a submarine or a Cheshire cat looks like. Yet.
As a child book illustrator, you and the author should work to show a story that will stir pictures in a child's mind. Members of your audience are discovering the joy of reading, or are building their skills. They would be overwhelmed (and possibly discouraged from reading) if the author had to show every detail in words alone. But from the first glance, you can truly add a thousand words of little details with each picture.
How Do I Get Started?
There are three routes to become a childbook illustrator:
(1) Team up with an author,
(2) Get the attention of an agent or publisher
(3) Illustrate your own children's stories.
The first two routes require you to advertise your talent. Make sure you have a portfolio of your work scanned into your computer in .JPG or .PNG files (these are nearly universal graphics formats for web browsers and drawing programs. Wait. I've got the cart in front of the horse.
First, make sure you know how to use a scanner (to bring your freehand work into a computer), and a graphics manipulation program (to view/edit your previous work, and/or to create new artwork directly on the computer). A graphics manipulation program is usually bundled with your scanner software. If not, two programs you might want to try are Adobe Photoshop and the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is free.
Use WinZip to compress your portfolio into a single file. Now you can send your example work as an email attachment to authors, agents, and publishers. Better yet, a web site works as a wonderful online gallery.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with querying publishers and agents directly. This is also useful if you choose to illustrate your own children's stories. Just make sure you take as much care with your writing as you do with your artwork.
Child book illustrators are in equal partnership with writers. If you both focus on the common goal, your audience will be able to picture every word, and see the story behind every picture.
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