A very helpful editor over at Omnibus Books gave the advice at a children’s book writing seminar that it is very unusual to receive finished illustrations with a manuscript. She went on to say that it is even discouraged because of the uncomfortable situation that can arise when the story is literary genious and the illustrations are scribble, or the illustrations are masterpieces and the story is dribble!

With that advice in mind, if you wish to submit a manuscript with illustrations, I would lean towards only sending in sketches and perhaps one finished illustration (as a sample) with your manuscript to a publisher.

That being said, there are many talented aspiring writer/illustrators out there… and to you I would give the advice to just illustrate larger than you hope the book will be, and paint extra bleed (trim) around the illustration. That way if your story is picked up by a pubisher, there is flexibility to scale down and trim the illustrations as needed.

You can find more tips on how to illustrate a children’s book here. And if you have any questions about children’s book illustration or publishing, feel free to post your questions in the comment section.

Thought it would be fun to share a few of the finished pencil illustrations for Spotty & Eddie’s latest adventure. I’ve really enjoyed taking my time with these illustrations… the remaining illustrations will be completed by December 2009. Once I’m finished drawing all the illustrations I will go in and tint them with colour digitally in Photoshop. I’ll show a step-by-step example of Spotty & Eddie when I’m at that stage… but if you’re curious as to how to colour pencil illustrations in Photoshop, you can check out my tutorial.

Developing your own brand is the first step in marketing yourself as an illustrator. The purpose of a business card is to quickly provide the recipients with your contact details, to remind them of who you are and what you do. The best part about being an illustrator is that your business card doesn’t need to be stuffy… it needs to reflect your style, while being simple enough to complement any printed promotional materials that it may accompany.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when creating your business card :

• • Contact details to include are : Your logo, name, phone number, email & website.
• • Keep the type treatment clean and legible. Choose type treatments that you can carry across your other stationary (such as invoices, letterheads, quotes, etc.) Above all keep your promotional materials consistent with each other, you don’t want a higgldy-piggledy bunch of promotional materials.
• • Size : Go with a standard business card size. While choosing a unique size is, well… unique… it can be a wasted expense when the thing people are most interested in with an illustrator’s business card is illustration!
• • Full-colour printing : Prices for printing have dropped significantly, so that now it is almost as cheap to print full-colour (front & back) business cards as it is to print them in black & white. Yeah, full-colour illustration opportunities!
• • Embellishments : It’s a personal preference whether you want to splurge for embosses, varnishes, or matte-laminates… just keep in mind that you want your illustration to be the star of your business card.
• • Consider including an illustration : You’re an illustrator, so take this opportunity to show off your style! Chose an illustration that best reflects your talents. Crop in close for interest, or show the whole illustration on the back of the card. You could even illustrate something especially for your business card. If you have more than one style, you may want to consider having more than one business card (just be sure to keep your logo and contact details consistent between business cards.)

Above all, have fun with your business card… give it a bit of your personal flare, and don’t be afraid of making it look like your own style as people like to see an illustrator’s styles come through in their branding materials.

I finished colouring a few more ink illustrations for my diary of Hera’s outfits. Enough distractions, back to drawing turtles for Spotty & Eddie!

It was a weird feeling walking through Kim Wang’s grocery shop at the Adelaide Central Markets this morning, and having my eye caught by something familiar but had never seen before… a tv tray with my illustration on it! I did this cows grazing illustration for a Seasons collection over at ImageZoo where it is available royalty free. One of the funny things about selling your images royalty free is that you don’t know what applications your illustrations may be used for. Anyhoo, suppressing the urge to tell strangers that I painted the illustration on this tv tray, I walked out having purchased four of them. Not exactly sure what I’ll do with cow coffee trays, but I had to buy them on principle :)

A month on from first introducing pencils, crayons & markers to my little girl, I’ve realized I’ve created a colouring monster! Last night I first noticed that she hasn’t played with any of her toys for the last four days… just happily sits and scribbles. Funnily enough, when her crayola markers aren’t out she gathers to herself all the graphite pencils, leaving the colourful ones scattered about. It’s been intriguing watching a little one learn how to use the pencils… progressing from side to side scribbling, to big round circles around them, to carefully drawing little circles imitating mummy drawing on the paper (bottom).

Here is another of the new illustrations I’ve completed for my diary of Hera’s outfits… a simple graphite pencil drawing, with a colour layer tinted over top in Photoshop.