Behind The Scenes Creating My First Picture Book (Patreon)

Hello my beautiful flowers!

My very first illustrated picture book was published last month so I wanted to share with you some of the creative process!

I was first approached to illustrate a picture book last May, started on the draft sketches around July and had finished the full colour illustrations in September 2021.

I had such a nice time illustrating this book and feel really fortunate to have been given the opportunity. It's called The Love That Grew and it's about how love for children can grow with the arrival of each new family member and as the youngest of 4 kids it felt especially relevant to me!

So what was the process?

I’m sure it varies a little for different publishers, but the creative process for this book went a little something like this:

I received a word document with the text written out per spread (which is two pages)

I was then given full creative freedom to come up with draft sketches of the illustrations for each page, which I did as digital sketches

I sent my publisher the draft sketches as jpgs bundled up as a pdf

They came back to me with some feedback from both themselves and the author

I updated the draft sketches and they approved them

Then I was ready to illustrate the final illustrations in my own time (before the deadline of course). I started with one full colour page of the family to make sure they were happy with how they looked before I illustrated every page

I illustrated all of the final artwork and sent them jpgs bundled together as a pdf

They gave a little bit of feedback on some things which I then updated

Once they approved the illustrations I sent them the Photoshop working files with the artwork across different layers so that the book designer could adjust things if they needed to

The book designer laid out the text throughout the book and on the cover and back

They sent me the final proof with all of the text and illustrations together so that I could approve it and that I was happy that nothing important about my illustrations had been changed

And then they sent it to print!

Although they were happy to give ideas and answer questions if needed, my publisher really handed over full creative freedom of the illustrations to me which I was surprised about but it was really nice! They had some ideas about how many family members they wanted, but other than that they didn’t have any creative involvement until they gave feedback on the draft sketches.

So to start my creative process with this book (having never illustrated a book before!) I went to my local library and borrowed some childrens books for layout inspiration. I knew that I wanted each spread to be a little different and for there to be a flow between the pages, but I needed to look at some existing examples of how picture books are illustrated to understand what layouts felt natural.

I then made a Photoshop file for each spread of the book that I needed to illustrate (HarperCollins supplied the technical dimensions for the book so I used that for my artboard size) and started sketching my drafts. I knew that I wanted some spreads to be a full illustration across both pages, some to have the illustration in a little frame, and some to have individual elements floating about.

I laid out the text as a temporary placeholder (the book designer will update the font and maybe the position of the text later) because I needed it on the page to make sure there was enough room for it alongside my art, and it also helps me when I’m illustrating to be able to reference the text and see the page with all of the elements there.

I actually drew my sketches with a really basic colour pass to them, partly to help me visualise how the spreads would flow together and partly to help the publisher understand where I was going with them.

So some things that I considered when coming up with the layouts was:

Variety - making sure that there were a variety of layouts throughout the book

Pacing - trying to start the book feeling calm, become more exciting and adventurous, and then ending on a calm note again. I did this mostly with colour and composition, but also with how energetic the character poses were.

Motifs - I wanted to introduce a motif of a love heart on every spread

Movement - I wanted some of the spreads to really feel like they flowed together, so I brought in a wispy element that moves across a few of the pages

Let's take a look at some of the spreads as a full process from draft sketch to finished illustration:

Overall I’m really happy with how the book turned out, and I’m currently illustrating my second!

It's available in book stores in Australia or on Book Depository for worldwide delivery.

I’m going to be making some YouTube videos about the book, but let me know if you have any specific questions that you’d like me to answer here and I’ll be happy to share what I can!❤