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Hey peeps! How are you?
I hope everyone has been enjoying their summer. It’ll be autumn before we know it.
This month, I’ve been focusing on exploring the creation of art samples geared toward picture book illustration. At the beginning of August, I met with my art rep, and we discussed some wonderful tips and suggestions about things I could do to benefit my portfolio.
I have a variety of interests in creative markets, and I would love the opportunity to create for different companies and work alongside them. My reps at Shannon Associates are incredibly helpful and encouraging of my work and abilities. Their support has been an amazing source of motivation, knowing that they recognize and can visualize how my skills could be presented across a broad range of commercial industries.
The children’s market, particularly working in the picture book industry, has fascinated me ever since my art school days. Some of you may not know this, but back in the early 2000s, I had my first hands-on experience illustrating a picture book called, “Hear My Prayer”Ā by Lee Bennett Hopkins, published by Zonder Kids in 2011. It was a lot of work, but a very exciting and fulfilling opportunity that I was blessed to have been a part of.
All these years later, I’ve rekindled my desire to create narrative illustrations for kids and kids at heart. For a long time, I had moved away from communicating a story through my artwork. If you’re an artist, I’m sure you can relate to the feelings of trying to “find your style” and learning to experiment with different techniques to produce quality work more efficiently. I’ve always felt like a slow drawer, so I would look for ways to brainstorm simple concepts, often focusing on single characters or subjects.
Over the course of my journey, I’ve developed the ability to work more efficiently, maintaining a high standard of quality while being less confined and obsessive over detailed perfection. This has allowed me to be open to simplifying my lines, shapes, and other techniques to capture the essence of my characters without making them appear overworked. I’ve become okay with rough lines, brush strokes, and textures as a means to quickly lay down my ideas.
Now, I can take the tips, tricks, and hacks I’ve picked up along the way and expand on my concepts. I can visually tell a story that shows facial and physical expressions in basic forms, illustrating how a single character interacts within their environment.
Over the past few months, I’ve illustrated a few pieces where I explored how I interpret a couple of classic children’s stories: “The Three Little Pigs” and “The Secret Garden”. This was a great exercise for me to hone my skills in conceptual thinking, character design, composition, and visual storytelling.
“The Three Little Pigs” was my first self-imposed project. I challenged myself to develop thumbnail storyboard sketches and go through several phases of character design sketches before deciding on which pieces would work as strong examples to showcase in my portfolio.
I found this process a great way to learn how to select keywords from the text and illustrate specific scenes that complement the story. I’ll share my illustration of The Secret Garden in a follow-up post!
Till next time!
~ Gigi
