How Do You Cope with Working Along All the Time? - Jenn

My Studio

Being an illustrator can be a kind of lonely business sometimes. Last winter, I bought a little TV and sometimes if I'm doing something really repetitive I'll turn on the TV for background noise.

One of the most difficult things I find working alone is trying to stay focused. I, like many illustrators, work from home. And as you can imagine there are lots of distractions around here like doing the house work or making dinner. Even though I have an awesome workspace, there are times when I will go to Starbucks or the local library to work. It helps me stay on task and also gives me a little human interaction.

How Do You Cope with Working Alone All the Time - Holli

^a view of my studio

For the first time in my career I am finally "working alone" since my studio assistant, art director and mess maker (a.k.a. the Woog) went off to Kindergarten this year. I think I have adjusted well. I wouldn't say I'm getting more work done (I've always had a steady work flow going even with her in the studio) but I do like working constantly and uninterrupted for hours without having to take breaks. One thing that did stand out that I do work alone now, was when my husband called me one afternoon. My "hello" was very croaky and it hit me that I hadn't said a word since I told the Woog goodbye that morning!

How do you cope with working alone all the time? - Anette

I love working as a freelancer from my home office. I like having no one around so I'm able to focus on my projects, but working alone day in and day out can feel a bit lonely from time to time. I have found a few things that helps:
- Every day I go for a walk or run. It feels good to get out of the house, be active and get some fresh air.
- I check in with the other Illustration for Kids girls at least once a week. We update each other on what we're working on at the moment, and we motivate and help each other when needed.
- Every now and then (not very often) I take a day off work to just go shopping or visit someone. It's nice to get a change of scenery and be around people.

What's the strangest thing you have been asked to illustrate? - Susan

I don't think I have had to illustrate anything particularly strange, but I have had some tough assignments, such as this one. I had a job for an educational publisher to illustrate a phonetic awareness spread. There were a bunch of different words that I had to illustrate, but I also had to make sure that it told a story and made sense.
Here are the words: Hole, home, bone, stone, rope, mole, cot, coat, sock, soak, rod and road. I also had to include an armadillo.

And here is what I came up with:


It was a toughie, but I was happy with it in the end,

What's the strangest Thing You've Been Asked to Illustrate - Jannie

I usually like the strange assignments. Here is one I did about a worm that wants to eat a honey sandwich.
I love the world of anthropomorphic animals. Its the only place where a bear waitress serves a worm patron. No big deal.
And why give him a fork and a knife when he HAS NO HANDS?!? Just because. I love the world of children's books!

-Jannie

What's the strangest Thing You've Been Asked to Illustrate - Jenn

I was going to say an elephant playing baseball but Holli's bodily fluids made me remember having to illustrate stomach acid. It was a really fun assignment (no really!) I love projects where I actually get to learn something new. The specs for the above spot were to show 2 test tubes full of stomach acid with lima beans in one and and a hunk of meat in the other - yummy :) My first though was, "what the heck color is stomach acid?" I think it's actually suppose to be clear but I took a little artistic license and made it slightly yellow show it would show up better.

My favorite part of the assignment was doing portraits of the various scientists. I wish I could remember this guy's name.

What is the strangest thing you've been asked to illustrate? - Holli

Specs: Standing in front of potty with hands over mouth -'oops'. Small puddle of wee in front of him.

This has got to be the strangest request I've ever received and I laughed out loud when I read it. The book hasn't been released yet so I'm just showing a little peek of the final but it's going to be a cute one! "Wee" ha, ha, ha!!

What is the strangest thing you've been asked to illustrate - Claire

For me it was from the same series of books from Happy House. I illustrated five books with whimsical themes including one about five spiders. In this illustration they are riding a bike. Not an easy thing to illustrate! I had so much fun with this project, I'd like to do more books like these ones.

What is the strangest thing you've been asked to illustrate? - Anette

If you work as a children's illustrator you get to illustrate a lot of fun and strange ideas every now and then. I think the strangest thing I've been asked to illustrate is a moose dancing with a hula hoop. This is the last illustration in the book In the Moonlight, published by Happy House in 2008.

What's Your Favorite Art Reference Book? -- Paula

When I considered this question, I had to broaden my thinking to consider all books I use to help me create my work--or create in general. Lately, The Creative License by Danny Gregory has been my go-to book for encouragement and inspiration (I even took it with me on my trip to Newfoundland this summer). When it comes to helping me in other ways (choosing colors, layout, style, etc.) I have used my back issues of Print's Regional Design Annuals, as well as old illustration annuals or source books (The Black Book, Directory of Illustration, etc.) to see how other illustrators have handled various aspects pertaining to an image.

What's Your Favorite Art Reference Book - Holli

I have several reference books on drawing and use google's image search a good bit as a reference for things I'm not very familiar with. My favorite reference books for color combinations are children's books. I have a vast collection of brightly colored books that really play with color.

What's Your Favorite Art Reference Book - Jenn

I'm going to tell you about two references. One that is still in print and the other that is kind of hard to find. It always drives me nuts when folks rave about some great book then I find out it's out of print and costs hundreds of dollars.


First, the hard to find one and it isn't even a book exactly. Some of my favorite reference material is the "Famous Artists Course" from the 1950's. My grandmother took the course back in the late 40's early 50's. Apparently each month or so a new lesson was mailed out as loose leaf pages. My dad told me that my drawing table (also my grandmother's) came with the course material. There are about 26 lessons in all. The stack must be about a foot high. I always tell myself I'm going to go through all of them one at a time some day and do all the exercises but I never do. But there is lots of great stuff in there about figure drawing and composition. I find it interesting that they don't cover color until about the 20th lesson or so. The thought being that you have to master drawing and value before even attempting color.

The Famous Artists Course still exists although I wonder what has changed over the years. Sometimes you can find these old lessons on ebay or if you ever see them at a yard sale, jump on them.


Okay now for one you can actually find. Cyclopedia Anatomicae is an anatomy book. The first half is devoted to humans which I don't use too much. There are lots of detailed drawings of individual bones and such which is a bit too detailed for me. What I like about it is the animals in the second half of the book. There are anatomy drawings (skeletal and muscular diagrams) of dogs, cats, pigs, apes (chimps), sheep, cows, bears, deer, camels, lions and horses. In fact, I think the book does a better job explaining horse anatomy than it does human.

What's your favorite art reference book? - Anette

"A Smile in the Mind"
(by Beryl McAlhone)
is not a typical art reference book. I love books that combine design, illustration and ideas, and this is a book just like that. It's a collection of clever ideas that inspire me every time I look at it. I think it's a must have in the bookshelf of everybody working with or interested in creativity. It will definitely make you smile again and again!

How Long Does It Take You to Make an Illustration?-Jannie

Like all of the ladies here have said, it really depends. Besides size and complexity, another big factor is familiarity of the subject matter. It will go alot faster if I have done the subject before.
Small personal projects, like ones I do just for Illustration Friday, or this promo I did recently, it goes fairly quickly. Because I work straight on the computer (without a pencil sketch) and I can essentially choose my own subject matter, the time ranges from 3-6 hours. I can spend alot of time tweaking since I work digitally though.
But for clients like book projects, a sketch is a must and that is where alot of time is spent. For example, here is one of the interior page sketch for The Haunted Ghoul Bus. I don't have an idea of how long this took me, since I like to sketch the whole book at the same time and tweak each page as I go along.

For the colored art, it takes me roughly 2-3 days to finish one spread. Now that I'm into adding textures in my work, it also adds to the time. If I had made some color decisions early on (such as already done another page in the book), it will go by faster.

And last, I think it depends if I am "in the groove." Web surfing and other distractions can really make me take longer than it should! If that happens, I believe in stepping away from the project for a while, and when I come back to it, I 'm refreshed and things go way smoother and faster.

-Jannie

How Long Does It Take You to Make an Illustration? --Paula

As the other girls have said, there's really no one answer to that question. "How long" is determined by many factors, such as, size and complexity. As an example, the poster below took several days to complete. Sometimes one is not only asked to do the illustrations, but design how something will look as well. In this case, I started with a page of text and designed the layout, background, illustrated copy, etc. as well as the spot illustrations. Typing out the text and figuring out how to work it in and around illustrations took up a good bulk of time. Fortunately, most of my illustrations jobs have the text already placed with a designated space for the illustration(s).



The fact is, even the simplest of drawings takes times. This sketch of a lion looks simple, but I drew a few samples of a lion in various positions before I opted for the rough you see below. I then added some shading and then colorized it so I could give myself and my client an idea of how the lion would look.


In the end, the lion looks very loose, quick and carefree. But maybe a half hour to an hour is behind this "quick & easy" looking illustration.


A good exercise that I challenge myself with every once in a while is doing an illustration from concept to finish in 15 minutes. The Illustration Friday topics are good for this exercise. The spot drawing below was completed in 15 minutes. What you don't see, though, is several sketches of other ideas for depicting "unfold". About seven minutes in I decided I'd better choose an idea and go with it. At whatever point I was at when my 15 minutes were up was where I stopped. A challenge like this helps one from taking themselves (or the drawing) too seriously and getting bogged down somewhere along the line.


Want to see more? Please come visit my website/blog.

How long does it take to make an illustration - Holli

Humm. That's a really hard question to answer for me. Some things usually take a few days or even minutes to finish. Most of my time spent on jobs is away from the computer. My brain is constantly working on a piece and once I sit down to do the final, I already know what I'm going to do and how it's going to pretty much look in final form. My digital style is always the quickest for me, then my Junk A Doodles style is next and my clay work takes me the longest (simply because of the baking, cooling, gessoing and painting).

This piece took me about 2 hours total to complete (after several concept sketches and ideas):

This one took about 3 hours (concept to completion):

And this piece took about 8 hours total to complete (after several concept sketches and ideas):

How Long Does it Take to Make an Illustration - Jenn

Interestingly, I was wondering about this the other day myself. Kid's always ask how long it takes to do the illustrations for books. So I timed myself to see. I tried to do an illustration as fast as I could for illustration friday. Bottom line, it took me about 30 minutes to complete this little unicorn. But I left out some steps that I would do if this were a real illustration assignment.

My 30 minute unicorn didn't account for time searching for reference material. Many illustration require either looking up images from books or the internet or sometimes actually taking my own photos for reference. I never copy other peoples photos of course, but I do use them to make sure I understand my subject. For example, I recently did a Noah's ark project and spent a good deal of time looking up photos of various animals at the library and on the internet. It was easy enough to find an image of each animal but then I had to dig deeper to see if the photo was of a male or a female and if the males and females looked different (of course you gotta have both on Noah's ark.) Then in some instances I had to find close up images, like when I looked up images of elephant's feet to make sure I drew the right number of toes. If an illustration calls for realistic people, I like to take my own reference photos. These are usually pictures of myself (taken with the camera on a tripod) so I can get the right poses. Sometimes I cheat and try to draw figures from memory but they tend to look stiff.

So once I get all my reference material collected, I do thumbnails to get the right composition. This is another step I didn't do in my 30 minute drawing. Sometimes I know exactly what the illustration is going to look like immediately. It's so much easier when it happens that way. But other times I try different positions and "camera angles" until I find one I like.

Then I do a final pencil sketch and then go to final. Of course like Anette said in her post, this portion takes varying amounts of time depending on how complicated the image is. The little unicorn above took me about 20 minutes to do the final art. But for the following illustration for "On a Dark, Dark Night" I had to manipulate the train photo on the wall to make it blue, design his robots bed sheets, and lots of other little details. The whole illustration took about 2-3 days to complete. So, how long does it take me to do an illustration? I'd say somewhere between 30 minutes and 30 days. But for a page-sized illustration it usually takes me around 2 or 3 days.

How long does it take to make an illustration? - Anette

This is a common question that's almost impossible to answer because it depends on so many things like:
- Style. Some illustrators work in a style that's pretty quick to finish while others spend a long time on painting details. This doesn't mean that an illustration who looks like it was done quickly actually was. Sometimes it can take longer to make a tiny illustration than a larger painting.
- Medium. I work with both ink and watercolors and acrylic paints - and even digital sometimes. For me it takes a lot longer to finish an illustration with acrylic paints than with ink and watercolors. (Others might be quicker with acrylics than with watercolors).
- Complexity. It takes a lot longer to paint an illustration with 8 kids than one with 2 kids. More details = more work = longer time.
- Size. It will always take longer to make a larger illustration than a small one if the illustrations have the same complexity.
- Sketches. Some illustrators like to spend a long time sketching out different ideas and planning the illustration in detail before they start working on the final, while others prefer to just make a quick sketch and go ahead.
- The illustrator. Some illustrators work fast, some work slow. It's very individual.

Here's a few examples of my work. These illustrations are about the same size and with the same complexity.
1. Ink and watercolors from the book "Kaptein Kråkes Hevn". I used about 5 hours on this.
2. Acrylic paints from "Highlights High Five Magazine". I used about 8-9 hours on this.
With ink and watercolors I can use lines to show where the legs in the pants meet or where the arm goes in the sweater, but with acrylics I have to paint subtle shadows for these kind of things, and that takes a lot of time.

How Long Have You Been Working As An Illustrator -- Paula

I'm coming up on 20 years of freelancing as an illustrator. So much has changed in that time in respect to the industry (e.g., computers; Internet) and myself (e.g., going digital; the Internet; my style-changes).

I had been a prolific cartoonist when I was a kid and that followed me into high school (I did the school newspaper's cartoon). When I got to college/university, however, there was no program in my school for any specializations (such as illustration or cartooning) so I delved into the fine arts, particularly printmaking, drawing and ceramics. In all these disciplines, my work still had a narrative quality as well as a comic-bend. Upon graduation, I chose to extend my studies and get a teaching certification so I could make a living. Art and illustration then took a back seat while I worked in the elementary school system for seven years, though I integrated the arts very heavily into my curriculum. But I really wanted to make the arts my full-time career, so several efforts were made to do so. At one point, I seriously contemplated getting a graduated degree in ceramics/pottery because I loved working in clay. I also realized it was important to me for my art to have a utilitarian purpose, so I needed to be doing something other than making esoteric painting, sculptures, installations, etc. (I don't know why I had that perspective of the arts in my head, but that was my thinking at the time). I eventually decided that ceramics wasn't the avenue for me, so I turned towards commercial art (the term used at that time) and began building a portfolio. And I starting taking it with me where ever I would go. One person I showed it to gave me a lead to a well-established music management agency that was looking to branch out and manage authors and artists. They took an interest in me, and through them, I landed my first job: the CD/cassette covers for a children's' series:


Over time, marketing brought more jobs and, after a while, there I was: working as an illustrator.

My style has gone through many changes over the past almost-twenty years, but my first love is really the simple style of line art and wash, which is what I've been honing in these days.

(Paula's website/blog)

How Long Have You Been Working as an Illustrator-Jannie

I have been professionally illustrating for almost 4 years now. My major was in illustration at school, but after graduation, I worked as a graphic designer and an art director at various children's publishers for many years. I still had my dreams of being an illustrator, which motivated me to build my illustration portfolio on the side and eventually landing an agent. After a while, I started getting illustration jobs while I still had my day job. It was getting to be too much, I had to choose one or the other. I chose illustration, and quit my day job in December of 2005 and haven't looked back since. It is amazing how that one important (yet very scary!) decision I made four years ago would lead me to where I am today. I've done so many wonderful projects since then. Being an illustrator is definitely my dream job! :-)

How Long Have You Been Working as an Illustrator -Holli

^my first paying gig (see below)^

How Long Have I Been Working as an Illustrator? The easy answer to this is "all my life." But counting in professional years, it's been about 5 years. I documented my first year here (which is badly in need of a separate site, redesigned and more resources added so bare with me on the stiff layout!). Looking back at the beginning I'm glad I didn't stay on my graphic design course. Branching out into illustration and switching my focus has been everything I wanted in an illustration career and I love every minute of it.

This above image is from my very first illustration job - where someone sought me out and actually paid me for it! I did these illustrations while I was 9 months pregnant and I was so scared I'd go into labor and miss the deadline. Luckily I finished them in time. And as you can see, my style has changed a lot!

How Long Have You Been Working as an Illustrator - Jenn

The short answer is, ten years. But I took kind of a weird path to becoming an illustrator. I always wanted to be an illustrator but was told that artists never make any money. So I went to school for a respectable career in computer science. I worked as a C++ programmer and a database consultant. But during that time, I took art lessons every chance I could. And I would always look longingly when I walked past the graphic design department at my office. Then when I had my first child I wanted a job that would allow me to stay closer to home. So that's when I decided it was time to try my luck at being a freelance illustrator. I read an article about Mary Engelbreit that said she started out by sending greeting card designs to publishers. So that's what I did. And I actually got a good deal of work that way. Then I was lucky enough to have Scholastic publish my first children's book. I've definitely had some years, espeically in the beginning, when I was very thankful we could rely on my husband's income to pay the bills. But for the most part things have gone pretty well.