Picture books are meant for small kids, who have just started to read and write or who entirely don’t have command of reading and writing. And that is why picture book illustrations need to be created with care. After all, these illustrations are meant for kids. Let’s discuss here how to make some amazing illustrations for picture books so that children find them overly amusing-
- The first and most important quality of such illustrations is simplicity. As discussed above, picture book illustrations are explicitly meant for small kids. And that is why they can’t be complicated or too complex. The simpler they are, the more appealing they will be to kids.
Interestingly, there are several ways to simplify illustrations so that they suit little children’s understanding. First, the illustrator must choose only a few objects or subjects to feature in the illustration. Including a lot many objects in the picture makes it look cluttered. And that is not what we want for picture book illustrations. We don’t want to challenge kids’ comprehension capacity. Also, the objects and characters in the book should be drawn with simple lines and brush strokes, without really going over the board. With, at least, these two rules followed, amazing picture book illustrations can be created, with which small children will readily connect.
- An essential feature of picture books is that they don’t carry a lot of text in them. Therefore, many picture books are printed without words. This is indeed a real challenge to create illustrations for such books. These illustrations need to be self-explanatory. Together, they need to tell a story. And they need to narrate it in a way that small children would easily understand. So, the illustrations must be interactive or overly expressive. They might not have text boxes in them, but they must be articulated well.
- They should look vibrant. This is perhaps the most vital point to keep in mind. Small children have a different taste than that of adults. They get easily drawn towards vibrant looking objects, whereas things having less prominent colors don’t appeal to them. If you want to impress kids with your picture book, make sure you hire a competent illustration company that listens to you to understand your specific requirements and demands. And after you have hired them, make sure they create catchy illustrations for your picture book.
- An illustrator should choose easy, recognizable objects and animals as subjects and with whom they are more familiar. This is also a vital point and can determine the success of your picture book. But for your illustrator to be able to do that, your story must not include any character or object which little children book covers might not recognize.
By keeping these points above in mind, an illustrator will be able to create the most beautiful illustrations for a picture book. But their performance is equally dependent on the author of the book, as it is their story which defines the limitations or freedom for the artist.
