Since none were available commercially I created a set of Prismacolor pencil swatch color libraries for Procreate on iPad.

These are based on pencil rubbings of each color and converted to RGB. Unfortunately, there is no way to label the specific swatch with the pencil #.

There were a number of colors that simply do not exist in the RGB color gamut and are therefore unable to be reproduce. In total there are 137 pencil colors (I believe. I might be off a couple).

If you have a need for these you can download them from here

Download Here

I’ll keep the link active for as long as I can.

@xin-li , no problem! It helps that my daughter loves Owl Diaries, and I was lucky to find her 2014 6-part series on Children’s Book Creation.

Hi, just wonder if any one had experience of magazine submission,such as Highlights and cricket. Is it like we send out promo postcard and wait? (for a few months I guess), anyone has experience to confirm this? Are payments from these magazines reasonable ?(instead of something like $20 per illustration)

In an older post I saw discussion of Cricket pays artist as late as a year after publication. How about Highlights and other magazines? Thank you!

@xin-li thank you

Much appreciated! I agree on all points!

@Lydia-M No it is not just you I have given up PS because of lag on the brushes and also they dont support windows 8 anymore . No problems with Clip studio paint

@Jenna-Jenks Great thread. I was pleased to see everyone's responses to the topic of different styles/levels of realism. Even more so when the issue of copyright came up and the discussion remained so level headed.

With that spirit in mind I wanted to clarify a point you mentioned "... but technically drawing an actor/actress isn't someone's property"

I may have misunderstood you , but I believe what you are referring to is legally known as Right of Publicity. And this is something that the actor/actress does control.

https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/right-of-publicity.html

The case that where I was first exposed to this concept was a t-shirt depicting The Three Stooges.

https://www.pfeifferlaw.com/entertainment-law-blog/the-case-of-the-copied-curly

I don't point this out to put you off the kind of work you might want to do, but rather so you can move forward with a clearer understanding of the legal landscape. (Plus I just really like talking about copyright since it's how illustrators generate their income)

@Lee-White Oh, ok! Thanks anyway.

Oh that's so great! Thank you for answering with so many details. You see, I am not an illustrator, I work in a large corporate company, so I have no idea how illustration and entrepreneurship go together. It is very enlightening, thank you!
I guess the survey is too broad to give you enough directions for your local market but I suppose that they are not too many surveys so each adds a little knowledge about the industry.

Good luck!

Re: Organizing SCBWI Illustrator Meetings San Francisco-Bay Area (asking for ideas)

Hi everyone! My name is Elena, I have just recently moved to San Francisco and I am looking for other illustrator fellows to work together/draw/share experiences. In IL we had a monthly SCBWI illustrators meetings, which was a tremendous help for staying on track (thanks Rich Green!). I found something similar to this here, but not in the city.
I guess what I am looking for is to learn about other illustrators moving to a new city and keeping connections with work/friendships etc.

Made some progress, thanks everyone for the feedback!

creature illustration sml.jpg

Also I forgot to add: how many pieces would you include? Maybe 5-10 is too many?

Hi @Laurasketches , I love your idea !
You have a really good line of action between angels, girl and bird, I think that you can accentuate that dynamic moving a little bit elements (and maybe changing just a bit their size to have contrast and give more importance where you want). I don't know if it's what you want but I feel like the composition give more importance on the church (especially because of the right wing of the bird.
I analyse deeply but honestly I really like it like it is right now. 😊

I look forward to seeing the result ! 🙂

@carlianne thank you for the compliment and suggestion! My kids said the same thing when they saw it. Oh there’s a squirrel there! 😊 So I decided to change the color of the squirrel to gray and accentuate the shadows a bit more. ABC82D76-3C38-4E52-B1E7-C7457902A9E5.jpeg

@KaraDaniel you bet, I will have some concepts of what im planning to do some roughs, so stay tune for that hehe

Alright, thanks everyone. I know what I shall be saving up for next. 🙂 Cheerio and happy sketching!! Looking forward to future shares and exchanges!

A lot of people working in children's books /illustrations came from an animation background (Jon Klassen, Christian Robinson, Claire Keane, Molly Idle, Pascal Campion, just to mention a few). I almost think it might be an advantage to study animation for doing children's books.

Sometimes, it is really hard to know what you want to do until you do it. My experience is to pay attention to how you feel when you are doing an animation project, compare to doing an illustration project. IF you have done a short animation and you have made a children's book yourself. Then you can compare the process, which one do you enjoy more.

Both animation and children's book is a time consuming process. I think the only way to not burn out is to really enjoy the process of doing them.

I hope you will have fun with whatever you choose.
And remember education does not define your profession. You can always change your mind. And if you have worked hard, nothing will be wasted :-). I studied graphic design for my BA, and interaction design for my MA, worked as an interaction designer for about 10 years. Now I am doing children's books. All my past experiences are very useful for me regarding making art, and also dealing with client relations.