How To Illustrate Children's Books If You Can't Draw?

How to illustrate when y'all can't depict to save your life

A personal tale with practical tips

You don't desire to await at annihilation I draw. Trust me. And rightly so — my abilities are only a stride above stick figures. But when I was a design intern my senior twelvemonth in college, my agency was in a compression: we needed some vector illustrations fast and didn't take anyone available to make them. Adamant to prove myself, I volunteered to give information technology a shot. (Yes, the girl who can't draw.) It shortly became clear that the procedure was non actually as difficult equally it externally appeared. My cease result not only solved the needs for this particular Fortune 500 company, but gave me the entry point into creating countless more that would be used across the nation.

Drawing (attempt) versus last analogy for an empty state at Envoy

It wasn't sheer willpower, nor did the stars only magically marshal that day. While the artistic principles of graphite drawing and vector illustrating tin be similar, the tactical approach for beginners is wildly unlike. With traditional drawing, yous're essentially attempting to mind-command a chiseled stick to movement according to your will. As someone starting out, this can be intimidating. When it feels frustrating to make fifty-fifty a circumvolve look halfway decent, making annihilation "expert" seems insurmountable. Y'all must deeply understand central principles, such as lighting and perspective, and it takes all-encompassing practice.

It doesn't mean that these skills aren't valuable (or that vector drawing is easy), only with the latter, the learning curve is incredibly less steep. We're talking a mole colina instead of a mount.

Ane tool to dominion them all

Earlier diving into the techniques, you lot beginning must empathize the programme. While this isn't an Adobe Illustrator tutorial, there is one particular beast of a feature — the Pen Tool—that is crucial for creating vectors. I tin can't tell you how many times I've heard groans at the utter mention of its name. While it can feel discouraging after just clicking around with it, information technology doesn't have to be excruciating to learn. I fully attribute my quick success with it to a single affair: mazes.

Dating back to college days, the assignment was to complete the labyrinths similarly to how you would with a regular marker, only instead with points and curves.

Paralleling the pathways, with as few anchor points as possible

Subsequently one week of pen-tooling mazes, I never had any difficulties with the instrument once again. If I could shout one thing from the rooftops to beginning illustrators, it would be to conquer mazes.

Rapid growth from imitation

A huge cistron that allowed me to quickly pick upward illos (my preferred pet name) was that I wasn't starting from scratch. Rather than dreaming up every little particular—shape, color, perspective, message, texture, then on—I was just both rebuilding and adding to an existing set. Copying is the fastest fashion to go within the mind of an analogy, and truly empathize how it came to exist.

Breaking information technology down

One of the illustrations my agency requested didn't have a native file, so my job was to perfectly recreate it.

I started looking at the components it would take to rebuild—a circle for this, a modified rectangle for that. With the exception of some unique paths hither or there, near every function stemmed from the unproblematic shapes nosotros learn in kindergarten.

In fact, it really turns out that well-nigh apartment illustrations are either based upon these bones shapes (which Illustrator perfectly pre-sets), or an organic shape (for which the mazes serve as preparation).

Popsicle fabricated from circles and rectangles

I use the pre-prepare shapes equally much equally possible. Since nosotros're human, we simply tin can't draw a circle as perfectly equally a computer tin. While information technology might feel like cheating, information technology merely ensures that the final results await swell and tidy. (Psst, check out Pathfinder, Corner Widget, and Scissors Tool to boost your efficiency.)

Trimming circle paths to make macaroni noodles

Extending a style

The other chore at hand was to brand more illustrations in the aforementioned style. Although not as like shooting fish in a barrel to validate perfection, the flip side was that there was a lot more wiggle room, while all the same inside comfortable boundaries.

At beginning information technology seemed overwhelming to create shapes from my own head, but I applied the same logic equally before—creating and tracing paths. Just this time, looking at other illustrations every bit a jumping-off bespeak. Of class, information technology's extremely of import to not copy someone else'south work, but base upon a technique done right. For example, I might find three different existing illos of hair. I could combine the torso of waves from one, bangs from some other, and angle of the caput from a third. Once that underlying shape was created, it was easier to and so change upwardly the points until they became all my own.

Five years later

Now I'm illustrating multiple times a week, without thinking twice about the building blocks or how to set up my Bézier curves. I still can't draw. But I do sketch to ideate and communicate rough ideas apace. I don't call myself illustrator—I'g a designer, who also illustrates. This distinction is important because at that place are a lot of masterful illustrators out in that location that I don't even come close to touching. Mayhap one mean solar day I will, maybe I won't (though take hold of me always-practicing on Dribbble.)

Some illos from both work and side projects

Nothing worth doing comes hands, the most important thing is to just starting time somewhere… and sometimes, starting isn't quite as difficult as you might call up.

P.S. If y'all give the maze assignment a try, we'd love to see! Tweet at Envoy Blueprint and we'll transport you a surprise. 💌

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