children’s illustration

Illustration – Portfolio Basics

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Illustration – Portfolio Basics

One of the most important “must-have’s” for an illustrator is a professional-looking portfolio. Wether you are a student with no experience or a seasoned professional, your portfolio needs to show your best foot forward. It is the first impression given of you and your work, talent and style, and you only get one chance to make that first impression!

I’ve compiled a few links to articles discussing the basics of setting up your best portfolio impression, and I will add some of my own tid-bits based on my experience over the years in past positions as an Art Director, designer and freelance illustrator.

Here is some valuable reading on art portfolios from Computerarts.

Portfolio “How-To’s”.

Portfolio tips from children’s book editor Cheryl Klein.

Preparing a Student College Portfolio.

You will definitely want to be specific in directing your portfolio to the specific area you would like to focus on.

As a children’s book illustrator and a graphic designer/technical illustrator, I have several different portfolios.  If I am showing my work to an art rep who promotes to children’s publishing, I will obviously show the specific portfolio for my children’s illustration.  Trust me, they do not want to see highly technical renderings of machine parts, or the latest and greatest ad you just completed for that fortune 500 company.  I have seen artists lump everything together into one portfolio and show that one portfolio to everyone.  All it does is dilute your work and the viewer will have a difficult time sorting out and remembering exactly what it is you do that can be of use to them.

Start out with a great looking case, even if it doesn’t cost a bundle of money make sure it is in good, clean condition.

With a “screwpost” portfolio you can control the amount of page inserts in the book.  For illustrators, try to keep it at 10 to 12 of your absolute best work.

Try to get a professional’s, (or 2) opinion on what your “best” work is.  Sometimes we have a hard time choosing for ourselves.  I was lucky enough to sit down for a portfolio review with award winning children’s illustrator E.B. Lewis.

His feedback and pointers were very helpful and the images that he was choosing as my strong pieces were different than the one’s I had thought were.  He also suggested that I follow a “post and Rail” theme to the book, meaning that you intermingle strong “Post” pieces with the weaker “Rail” pieces.  That’s not to say that the “rail” pieces shouldn’t be just as high quality.

I hope this information has helped you in setting up your illustration portfolio.  Feel free to add a comment.  Thanks for visiting!

Lorraine Dey

illustrator – Deystudio, LLC (www.deystudio.com)
(click on the “about” tab above to see more about Deystudio, LLC)
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FREE Vector of the month from Deystudio, LLC:

click on image above to get a PDF file.

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This month’s featured site…”Brewer-Cantelmo Presentation Cases”

Quality Presentation Cases for illustrators and Photographers.

 
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Featured image for this month…(from my RF stock portfolio)

“Promoting Your Children’s Book Illustration Online”

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“Promoting Your Children’s Book Illustration Online”

I thought I’d share a few of my favorite ways to promote children’s illustration online.  You’ll want to start out with good 72 dpi JPG images of your work and a basic bio and contact info. of course.

A rough cover design for my current book project, “The Rain Forest Party”, my first picture book as author and illustrator.  It is scheduled for a Fall 2011 release by Raven Tree Press.  Read more in last month’s blog post or become a new fan.

 

Building a web presence… It is really best if you have a website to showcase your online portfolio. Create your own, or post your images on a free social network site or blog.  It will definitely look much more professional and you are more likely to be taken seriously if you have a website of your own.
Avoid an ametuer-looking website

Start a Blog: This is a good idea if you have something to share that may benefit others. You can also start a blog of weekly illustration samples and promote it with a link to a site such as Illustration Friday which features a weekly subject to illustrate.     

Show your Published and In-Progress work: I can often fit images and information into my monthly blog with examples of what I am currently working on, or news and new release information.  It usually fits the topic in some way.

   

Social Networking Sites: Set up a page on social sites such as twitter.com, facebook.com, or LinkedIn.com  for promoting your work or any new books that will be released.  An industry-specific social networking site for Children’s Books is JacketFlap.com.

Join a Group: There are groups such as SCBWI that feature their members portfolio images and information on their websites, included in the membership fee.  They are also a great source for regional and local events and critique groups as well as a great place for finding valuable industry information.

 

Advertise with Trade Websites: Childrensillustrators.com  is one of the industry leaders but there are several others as well.  The cost per year is minimal considering that many publishers and agents use this site and have access to your work samples. Try an online search for “Promoting Children’s Illustration”. 

Cross-Promote: Add a link to your blog on your website.  Include your social networking links on everything.  Tweet about any updates and any news about you and your work, and include links to your blog or website in your tweets.  Many of these sites like Facebook have a feature to allow you to connect your other social network sites like Twitter so you can update your posts for all your SN sites at once.

Update Your Portfolio: Try to update your work samples frequently and keep a current online portfolio of your best work.  Treat your online presence as you would your actual portfolio book.  Think; fewer images that focus on your individual style and your absolute best quality work. 

Good Luck!

 
Lorraine Dey
illustrator – Deystudio, LLC (www.deystudio.com)
(click on the “about” tab above to see more about Deystudio, LLC)
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FREE Vector of the month from Deystudio, LLC:

click on image above to get a PDF file.

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This month’s featured site…”Hire An Illustrator”

A promotional site for Illustrators to showcase their work.

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Featured image for this month…(from my RF stock portfolio)

 

“Picture Books – The Illustrator’s Process”

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“Picture Books – The Illustrator’s Process”

Since I began promoting myself in the area of Children’s Book Illustration, I have had a number of people inquire about providing illustrations for their “book that they have written and always wanted to publish”.  I decided to put together some resource information for this month’s topic to shed some light on the process a picture book illustrator may go through. 

book_mockup1 book_mockup2

I hope to also dispell the myth that as a writer you need to hire an artist and have the illustrations completed to submit along with your written manuscript.  Here’s what I tell people that ask me about illustrating a book they are interested in getting published… “Send the manuscript to the publisher, without illustrations.  It will be judged on it’s own merit and if the publisher is interested, they will find an illustrator that fits the project, …that’s just how it’s done”.

Instead of going into any more detail, there is a great article on that subject here at Harold Underdown’s site, The Purple Crayon 

Since publishers are looking to match-up illustrators with manuscripts that they like, an illustration project for a picture book will most-likely come directly from an editor or art director at a publishing house.  The publisher may send a manuscript to several illustrators at the same time and ask for a sample page or two in order to select the exact style they are looking for.  At that point they will narrow their selection down to one illustrator.

From the Illustrator’s side…

Once they decide on an illustrator, a contract is drawn up between the illustrator and publisher containing details of due dates, royalties, etc.  If you don’t have an agent working with you on this it is a good idea to have an IP, (intelectual property) attorney take a look at it for you.  Once all the legal stuff is out of the way the illustrator starts sketching and preparing a sketch “dummy” of the book.  It’s a rough mini-version of the book page layout.  This helps to see how the book flows from page to page and helps in laying out color and text position.  Make sure to check with the publisher for specifics on the book size dimensions and how many pages, etc.  Typically that is around 28-32 pages with between 500-800 words for a picture book, (max is 1000).  Rough sketches of the page spreads are submitted to the publisher first before any color work is started.  Once you get the go-ahead on the sketches, it’s time to add the color.  Here is a bit more information and sample layout of the pages for a picture book from Kathy Temean’s blog.

Dey_Sketch1  Dey_Duncan  

From “A Sweater for Duncan” – To be published by Raven Tree Press .

 

Personally, I like to add one more step in there and do a “color” rough that shows the publisher what you have in mind.  The color mock up shown at the beginning of this article was put together using print-outs of the color roughs that were sent to the publisher.  I use this mock up, (complete with numbered pages) throughout the entire time I am working on the final illustrations in order to keep everything organized.  Once the illustrations are finalized and sent to the publisher, you can be sure there will be some changes, (much easier to do if you are working digitally).  The publisher then produces the book, usually within about 6 months to a year.  You can be sure I will post the announcement here when “A Sweater for Duncan” is released next Fall.  🙂

See all current news and release date info. for “A Sweater for Duncan”  

Lorraine Dey
illustrator – Deystudio, LLC (www.deystudio.com)
(click on the “about” tab above to see more about Deystudio, LLC)
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FREE Vector of the month from Deystudio, LLC:

coffee_cup

click on image above to get a PDF file.

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This month’s featured website or blog…”illustrator Sahin Ersoz”

I came across Sahin Ersoz website several years ago and find myself still going back for a visit every so often.  I love his style of characters and animation.  He has done several Disney projects. Enjoy… be sure to check out the sketches!

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Featured image for this month…(from my RF stock portfolio)

dey_snowman 

“Transitioning from Traditional to Digital Illustration.”

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“Transitioning from Traditional to Digital Illustration”

One of the first things I can tell you if you are planning on going digital with your illustration abilities is to make sure your computer can handle the amount of space needed for large graphic files. They become huge very quickly, especially if you are painting raster images, (explained later in this article).
I also recommend getting a tablet and pen such as the Wacom tablet.  (http://www.wacom.com) Though that is not necessary to create your art digitally, it does make the transition a bit easier especially if you are a painter.  It also helps to have a good scanner.  One that can get you scans of at least 300 dpi resolution.  There is a good link for setting up a Wacom tablet here… http://www.gomediazine.com/design-tip/set-wacom-awesome-results/

Wacom Tablet & Pen
 

 Wacom Tablet & Pen

 There are several ways to produce digital illustration. 3d modeling programs are usually the first to come to mind however if you have been painting and drawing traditionally and have no time to learn a 3d program, you may want to try painting directly in Adobe Photoshop, (http://www.adobe.com) or creating vector illustrations directly in a drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator. I mention these programs because these are the ones I use. There are many different programs to choose from and the preference is up to you, although the Adobe CS programs are the most popular in the industry.  The two prominent styles to work digitally in are…

Vector illustration: (Adobe Illustrator or similar drawing program)

Raster illustration:(Adobe Photoshop or similar photo/painting program)

What is the difference between vector and raster digital Illustration?

Below you will see examples of the two different styles… I begin with a pencil sketch that is scanned into the computer as a B&W jpg file, then I place it on the page in the program file that I am working on and begin to work over the top of the sketch adding color and layers as I go.

Scalable Vector graphics, (SVG) are created in drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator and have a clean smooth line or curve. They are made up of solid or gradient color fills and can be scaled to any size and retain the quality of the image for reproduction purposes. It is a much smaller file size than a raster image and can easily be sent via email. These bitmap graphics are usually files with extensions such as .EPS, .AI, BMP, .PDF

Digital vector art sample

Rasterized, pixelated images are usually created in a photo-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop and can also include manipulated photographs. The digital illustration done in a raster style is made up of very tiny squares called pixels. My raster images are usually more painterly with a broader range of effects and brushes available in the Photoshop pallet, (a favorite brush of mine is #63).  This file tends to be larger than the vector art file. These are usually files with extensions such as .PSD, .TIFF, .JPG

Raster_sample

As you can see, I have started out with a scanned image of my original pencil sketch in the images shown above.  In the next sample I will show you a raster illustration that was done completely in Adobe Photoshop from start to finish without the sketch as a starting point.  I start out with basic solid shapes and then add color with the use of Photoshop brushes.  The final image shows a detailed area of the bacon strip illustration.

Digital Raster Bacon Illustration

Digital Raster Bacon Illustration

Once the illustration is complete you can save the file with a CMYK color mode for reproduction purposes.

I find that painting this way using the pen and tablet is a very satisfying transition from traditional to digital painting.  You may be frustrated with the tablet in the
beginning because you have to get used to the fact that you are staring straight ahead at your screen while you are painting with the pen in hand off to the side.  Don’t give up. 
You DO get used to it.  And after a while it becomes comfortable enough that you don’t even think about it. 
Well, I hope this sheds some light on the subject of digital painting for those of you who may be thinking of giving it a shot. 
Have fun!
 
Lorraine Dey
illustrator – Deystudio, LLC (www.deystudio.com)
(click on the “about” tab above to see more about Deystudio, LLC)

AN ADDED NOTE, (from my software engineer brother Rob):

“A BMP file is not a vector image (it’s an abbreviation for bitmap). To help clarify, a vector file is simply a text file that states where and how to draw each line (from x,y to x,y coordinates). These are easily scaled to a new size, by using a multiplier on ALL the coordinates. A raster file contains a binary value to define the color for each pixel (or bit) in the image (or map). These files don’t scale at all properly, but one technique is to use the same pixel 4 times to double the image size (for upscaling, pixels are copied, so the perceived resolution doesn’t really change, it appears to us as larger pixels, even though there are more pixels). Downscaling just removes pixels, which usually makes the image look worse. I don’t think a PDF file is vector or raster. The PDF format is proprietary, and is intended to print the same on any printer, which is not normally possible with raster and vector files”.


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FREE Vector of the month from Deystudio, LLC:

September 2009 - FREE vector from Deystudio, LLC

click on image above to get a PDF file.

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This month’s featured website or blog…”illustration for kids” 🙂

http://illustrationforkids.blogspot.com 
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Featured image for this month…(from my RF stock portfolio)

Penguin and Snowman Teamwork.
Penguin and Snowman Teamwork.

Welcome to the illustration site!

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This is the very new blog site of illustrator Lorraine Dey.  It will feature monthly articles containing various information for the graphic designer and illustrator with a focus on children’s publications, picture books and game illustrations.

I will be discussing methods, helpful tips and practical solutions, as well as linking to valuable support sites and related event listings, etc.  I look forward to sharing what I have learned over the past 30 years in this industry.  I hope you will find the information useful and that it is of some assistance to those who are beginning their own journey in this exciting industry.

My first blog post will be for September on “Transitioning from traditional to digital illustration”, and I will be including a new topic every month as well as a “Free vector of the month”, randomly chosen “image of the month” from a selection of some of my royalty-free stock work, and my “illustrator’s choice- blog or web site of the month”.  Thank you for visiting… please check back again soon for the current month’s topic of discussion.  Feel free to send me any topic or site/blog suggestions.  Enjoy!

Lorraine Dey

illustrator – Deystudio, LLC