Q&A for How to Illustrate a Children's Book

You can certainly use programs like Photoshop to create art for your children's book, but a drawing tablet is really the best option for high quality illustrations.

Yes, you absolutely can.

The brand of colored pencils is very important. Some brands have different sets of colored pencils that allow the illustrations to have different textural uses. Colored pencils can be oil-based or water-based, so knowing how you'd like the flow of color and texture prior to investing in colored pencils may save you time and money. Also, there are tool aides you can use with colored pencils that can blend, erase and more depending on your coloring needs.

Charcoal can be used for creating black-and-white illustrations. It is also great for sketching. You can use ordinary pencil instead, pen and ink, or even chalk pastel.

Scan them using a multiuse printer connected to your computer. Then you should be able to view the pictures. You could also use an online program with a touchscreen device or a drawing pad and drawing pen to draw directly on your device.

The easiest thing is to get down to it and write. Draw inspiration from your favorite authors, but make sure your book reflects you. Use your creativity and imagination. Have your family and friends, as well as yourself, edit the book and make suggestions so all your ideas and visions are clear.

Generally, illustrators are people who know how to draw well. If drawing is not your thing, you don't need to do it. You could ask someone else to do the illustration. Or you can learn how to draw. You can find many articles here that will help you improve your drawing skills, or watch videos on YouTube.

Some form of computer software, like Adobe Illustrator is used to organize and align the text with the images.

The above article gives you excellent ideas for when drawing in black and white. Remember to use shading to make an impact with your illustration.

You need to factor in the size as well as the dpi. If you have drawn your pictures at 4” x 4” and they are going to be enlarged substantially, 300 dpi will be too small. DPI should be assigned at the same size that your file will be printed. For example, if the printed file needs to be 10” x 10”, you need to create it that size and no smaller.

Stick to a single medium when creating an illustration in order to keep consistency. But there are no rules against using various different types of colouring utensils when one creates an illustration. If you are drawing for a client you should check with them first to see if they are opposed to it. But if you are drawing for yourself you have unlimited freedom.

Children aged 3 to 6 prefer big books with pictures, and not a lot of pages, about 6 to ten pages is enough.

That is an easy way of transferring a physical drawing into a form that can be easily inserted into a digital manuscript, whether it will be an e-book or printed.