Children’s Illustration - Helen Papworth.
To get into children’s illustration it helps if you love books, drawing and writing and desire to work from home, with a flexible work schedule. These are things that everybody wants. But remember to always keep a tight eye on your finances. It also helps if you stop eating for a while. A little hard work and soon your efforts will pay off, and you can eat all the decadent chocolates you desire. The best way to achieve this level of chocolate saturation is through effectively getting your name out there. This can be done in many ways. Entering high stakes competitions, submitting to magazines, slapping your name on a billboard or even more effective than that, use the internet.
IllustrationFriday.com is one of many art based websites that allows artists (and those pesky art lovers) to view each others work. It offers a weekly theme to work around if you so desire. But it is also open and free to use for everyone who wishes to. There’s no pressure or heavy criticism and offers everyone a chance to put themselves out there and meet others with similar tastes and interests. Places such as conceptart.org is very similar, but with much higher stakes. A place for professionals to submit work and get hard cutting critiques on their work. It has to be said however that getting your work torn to shreds is quite common. I’ve never been brave enough to venture forth.
Books can be produced on a small laptop, so use what resources you have. Self publishing and marketing is getting easier every day. But with that comes the threat of over saturation of the market. Make sure your work is as polished and professional as it can be. Standing out and offering up a good product will always work in your favour. It’s very rare that doing something badly will take off, but there are exceptions. Stephanie Meyers ‘Twilight’ series is popular for a reason. A good layer of polish can even sell an item that might otherwise be avoided.
The research will usually be more interesting than the illustration you produce and the facts of any given research will usually be much more bizarre. The best work we can ever do will educate people and make them want to learn and research the subject you’ve told them about. Make it interesting, fun and memorable. If a person becomes a fan of something because you’ve pointed them in the right direction, they will likely be interested in other things you can offer them. For instance, if you draw a children’s book about the wild west, presenting it in such a way that sparks off an interest in research, then that person might possibly be as interested in those other Cowboy children books you’ve written, and that history of America and the field guide to horses you illustrated. Good research will always shine through in your work. If you’re lucky, you’ll give others the research fever and make some choice comrades and customers out of it.
Keep ideas stored away, they might not work now but might be useful in the future and be sure to share them. Allowing ideas to cross pollinate and evolve stops them from becoming stale. Refer back to them, add to them and edit them. Never leave ideas to fester completely. Even a bad idea can come good in the end if you give it some care and attention, allow the context of it to shift and adapt to the projects you come across or the media you find.
Capture images and collect information. Being educated in as much as possible is never bad. Never stop at just the things you enjoy, dip your toe into subjects that challenge you, that you disagree with or find objectionable. You may feel uncomfortable but at least you will have learned something and become aware of just how many things truly exist. Sometimes you might even stumble across something you never knew existed by doing so.
Use local information, especially if you’re directing a piece of work at an audience. Remember you can tell a story without using words, which makes it easier for a story to cross cultures. But always use a beta when possible.
It’s hard to copy styles.
Always study the context. Then you can make a change in culture.
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