Illustrating Children's Books

Martin Ursell

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781847974334
• eBook ISBN: 9781847974952
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunsttechniken

How do you go about illustrating a children's book? Where do the ideas come from? How do you illustrate a narrative? How do you get published? This beautiful book answers all these questions and more. With practical tips and ideas throughout, it explains and follows the journey from first idea to final completed book. It is filled with illustrations that show how these images are made, and offers a rare chance to see the roughs, visuals and ideas sheets from a variety of childen's illustrators. Exercises support the ideas discussed and suggest ways of developing them. A beautiful book aimed at artists, illustrators, publishers, colleges and adult education courses teaching illustration. Explains the journey from first idea to the final completed book. Offers a rare chance to see the roughs, visuals and ideas sheets from a variety of children's illustrators. Superbly illustrated with 199 colour images. Martin Ursell is a senior lecturer in illustration at Middlesex University and has illustrated many books for children.

Chapter One

HAVING AN IDEA

These initial sketches by Wesley Robins are full of interest, excitement and enthusiasm. The details of the bags and clothing make one immediately eager to see the book that they inspired. A bizarre small drawing of a Zulu shield and spear add to the atmosphere of Victoriana, as does the mounted and stuffed deer head. Even on this page of the earliest ideas for his book Wesley has already convinced us that this book will be a winner.

There is no way of starting a picture book without having an idea. Try not to be daunted by this. An idea can come from anywhere: a phrase, a character, an incident, an image, even a joke. The story can be developed from this starting point – in fact that is exactly what making a picture book is – and one does not expect to begin the project with everything already sorted out.

Of course, you might want to use a story that already exists. Fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and fables all make for good starting points. You do not need to keep exactly to the original telling, and there is no knowing how they might evolve. Therefore, the Aesop’s fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf might become the story of a naughty Edwardian girl named Matilda who repeatedly shouts ‘Fire!’ though there is no fire, until when there is a fire and she shouts, nobody comes and she is burnt to death, as in Hilaire Belloc’s famous poem.

Your idea might be to have a counting book, or an alphabet book or a book about colours or shapes. The book may not have a story at all but be told by pictures alone. It may be telling us how to look after a pet or how to tell the difference between good and bad. These are all starting points.

If you are planning to have a go at writing your own story the first thing to remember is that it is a picture book; you do not really want there to be too much text or there will not be enough room for the pictures. Most picture books are 32 pages long (we will discuss this in more detail in Chapter 5), so a maximum of one thousand words – far fewer than it sounds – is a reasonable aim to start with.

In children’s picture books, many of the same basic plots are used again and again. The brilliance of the book is in the creativity of the author and the illustrator breathing new life into these themes. You may find the following list of the most commonly used themes useful as a trigger for your imagination.

• A story based on a window, door or portal into another world. For example, Alice in Wonderland, The Narnia Chronicles, The Subtle Knife.
• An untrustworthy character who tricks or gets the better of the other characters. For example Brer Rabbit, Mr and Mrs Pig’s Evening Out.
• A child who is mistaken for someone else.
• A character who is lost, either literally or metaphorically.
• A dream world where on falling asleep the character is somewhere else.
• The character having a fear of something that is resolved by the end of the book. They are shy, small or different.
• A riddle or a puzzle that needs solving. For example, Where’s Wally?, The Ultimate Zoo.
• Dealing with a catastrophe or disaster.
• An inanimate object that becomes real. For example, The Velveteen Rabbit, Pinocchio.
• A powerful being or monster that the child helps, with the result that they become friends.
• Curiosity, good or bad. For example, Pandora’s Box, Curious George.
• Dealing with a strange or eccentric family member.
• A magic implement or a spell that seems marvellous, only to end in tears. For example, Sparky’s Magic Piano, King Midas.
• A story about sharing, either with a positive outcome or a negative one. For example, The Fiends, The Dog in the Manger.
• A character taken out of their element to experience the consequences. For example, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, The Fox and the Stork.
• A vice or bad habit that leads to problems. For example, The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes.
• A chain of events where one thing leads to the next like a series of consequences.
• A chosen one or special child. For example The Sword in the Stone, Harry Potter.

These ideas sheets for Il Sung Na’s Brrr: A Book of Winter begin as no more than thoughts and words. The doodles and scribbles gradually evolve into more definite ideas for an illustrated picture book but one is left with a clear idea, looking at these sheets, that the book might go down any number of different routes. Keeping your options open in these early stages is very important.

Emma Block is looking at the Grimm brothers’ tale of Hansel and Gretel with these sketchbook studies. She is imagining what the characters might wear, what kind of world they might live in and who might share that world with them – forest animals, for example. In these very early stages of a picture book it is vital to cover this kind of ground. Inevitably, many of these ideas will never metamorphose into full-blown picture books but it is at this stage that one explores the possibilities.

It is no good waiting for inspiration to strike. One must set out to have an idea. Keeping a sketchbook or notebook of things that interest you or just things that happen is a great way of creating a source that you can refer to in order to get the imagination going. Often the best ideas occur whilst one is too busy to do anything with them so write them down where you will be able to find them. Like all these things this is something that happens over time, not something that one can do in an afternoon.

There are many ways of starting with an idea and developing this into a picture book and, as is the case with much of illustration, different ways work for different illustrators. Here are a few suggestions as to how to develop an idea.

• Beginning with an idea based on personal experience is a good start, maybe an episode or interesting adventure; write it out or draw it out as a storyboard, exactly as it happened. Now look at what you have and re-imagine those parts of the story that are dull or unnecessary – remember you do not have to keep to the facts. Think of it like retelling an anecdote: in order to make the story more interesting one often exaggerates a little or embellishes a few details. Try doing this with your visuals. In the same way, when one is recounting a story verbally one might want to give the characters different voices, or talk faster or louder at particular points of your tale. One can do the same thing with visuals by drawing lots of small drawings instead of one large image, or by choosing a bold dramatic angle to illustrate and emphasize a particular character’s action. When starting an idea the thing is to try everything. Explore and experiment all the time and try not to settle for the first image that comes into your head. It often seems like this is the best image one can come up with but there is almost always a much better idea just around the corner. This last point is extremely important and worth noting down.
• A joke makes another good starting point. It might need some work to turn this into a full picture book but on the other hand one already has the punch line to the story and this is often one of the most difficult things to resolve. As before, draw out your story in quick, simple visuals or roughs. At this stage try not to worry too much about using reference – this comes later; more important now is getting a feel for how one tells a story. Is it interesting and are you keeping the reader’s attention? Usually in a picture book one does not have many pages to tell the story so every word and image has to count. When beginning ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• Chapter One: HAVING AN IDEA
• Chapter Two: SKETCHBOOKS
• Chapter Three: STARTING A BOOK
• Chapter Four: DEVELOPING A CHARACTER
• Chapter Five: THE DUMMY BOOK
• Chapter Six: MEDIA and MATERIALS
• Chapter Seven: THE ARTWORK
• Chapter Eight: OFFERING your book for PUBLICATION
• Chapter Nine: LONGER STORIES
• Chapter Ten: THE PROFESSIONAL ILLUSTRATOR
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• GLOSSARY
• INDEX