Oh no I have it too!😫

@AngelinaKizz thanks!

@Melissa_Bailey Melissa- wow thank you.. I really appreciate your reply... And I love your work, omg... you helped me bridge a strange gap I couldn't close which is weird. I go through phases sometimes of feeling confident and then not, which I'm sure many experience yet it helps to have your hand in guiding me back to myself. So THANK YOU...

Kayla Harren's work is the closest I've seen to the vision I've had for the direction I'm aiming for in the children's book illustration sphere. I really cannot express enough how much this means to me as I said, I have been in a fog!!! Your work is similar and I admire your sense of play, silliness and innocence in childhood expressions, along with animals!

Have a great day and know your helpfulness came at the perfect time... 😌

@Jeremiahbrown Ha ha ha I was hoping there was a prince out there waiting to hand out millions... I would have signed up.

It seems like this would be the perfect opportunity to let loose and just see what happens. Maybe it's a case of wanting and being able to do both? Looking at Matt Rockefeller's instagram page, I would say that he could easily do either MG or PB projects. He seems to just prefer MG subject matter, but his style could work for either. If I was in your situation, I think I would include both PB pieces and MG/YA art as well. That way the person doing your portfolio review will have a range of what you are truly capable of.

@willicreate yeah my professors always made sure we had good prints. Though honestly once you have a decent enough image via print or screen I feel like having the right value you range is more important than colors. I’ll often take some creative liberties with the colors anyways.

@Asyas_illos oh thanks, i will listen to it right now!

@Isabel-Reyes-Feeney while it's good not to over-stress and overthink, it's also good to "begin as you mean to go on", as the saying goes. Knowing standard bleed, margins, gutter, and how to leave space for text is essential for an illustrator. So yes, it's good if your portfolio demonstrates that you know how to do that.

Trim sizes can vary widely, but most picture books fall somewhere between 8-10 inches wide x 8-11 inches high. It's rare to see a picture book taller than 12 inches high, since the clearance on most shelves is 12 inches. And librarians and parents hate it when books don't fit on shelves!

Standard bleed is 3mm, or 0.125 inches.

Margins vary, but the bare minimum for margins is usually 6mm, or .25 inches. However, when designing a book, I like to keep margins around 1 inch. That's because the book is going to be held by big and little hands, so I try to avoid the possibility of thumbs obscuring the text.

For the gutter, if you have a safe area of about 12mm, or 0.5 inches, you should avoid any essential elements of the illustration getting lost in the gutter. *However, if you're leaving space for text close to the gutter, you need a larger safe area. I try to keep any text 1 inch away from the gutter on either side, so the gutter safe area for text would be around 48mm, or 2 inches.

For a visual of this, here is a template that I made and use for all of my illustrations. The red area represents the bleed. The blue areas are "unsafe". The blue lines divide each page of the spread into thirds and help me with composition. Feel free to use this template. That way you don't have to measure things out every single time, which is what I used to do and it can get tedious. It's currently sized for an 8x10 inch trim size, but it's easy to adjust by changing the canvas size in Photoshop/Procreate/program of your choice.

6657be38-e058-40ce-bd73-768f76bc2239-spread template - 8x10 layout.jpg

Hope this helps! 😊

@davidhohn For what it's worth, my husband (who came back from the US yesterday) said that doing illustrations based on these shouldn't be a problem as long as I don't copy the covers in any way, that I could always take it down, and of course that he's not a copyright attorney. Of course, he's not considering either cancel culture or the fact that I'd have done a lot of work on the set!

Thumbnails for all three stories below!

@MelissaJacie Thank you!!!!!! (Taking a few deep breaths). Sigh..... it's hard, isn't it? The indecision, the psychological torture, the comparison, the perfectionism, the distractions, the endless possibilities, the guilt....! We start out with hope and good intentions and quickly get squashed by our own insecurities.

Oh yes. I struggle with wanting to do highly-detailed, cinematic-looking pieces but get overwhelmed as soon as I start. Then I jump back to trying a loose, flat style with minimal rendering, but immediately get bored (and discover anyway that it's harder than it looks!). Haha, I need to suck it up and finish something instead of jumping around endlessly with nothing to show for it.

Oooh, yes, that's exactly what I need! To take off this debilitating internal pressure and spend time just drawing for fun. Tonight, the plan is to put on a movie and to work on something with no expectations. Just to relax and see what I can do in my own way - not following a class or prompts or anything external to try and prevent that comparison monster derailing me.

Thank you again. I popped by your website the other day and was immediately inspired by your talent, dedication and faith. I need to surround myself with more people who are doing the things I want to do (because that outside noise is deafening, and I don't have any more time to waste feeling sorry for myself).

some people who really do a good job at his, is
https://www.youtube.com/c/FranMeneses
https://www.youtube.com/c/LeighEllexson
https://www.youtube.com/c/cheyennebarton

its always a good mix, i guess there is something to learn from them though because they reaaally eran a lot of money with this stuff.

@Isabel-Reyes-Feeney my previous agent advised that we should not include text with our illustrations but I personally think that it doesn't matter. i've never met anyone who didn't get a job because of it.

@Valerie-Light Congrats!!

Ooh, that’s really tricky, isn’t it! Because usually you’d have a finished book to show them, you wouldn’t be asking for feedback on rough sketches (plus, I know my 6yo wouldn’t have much to say besides, “wow, that’s really good, mummy!”).

The only thing I can think of is printing off finished coloured versions of your characters and reading your story while using the characters like puppets. At least then you can engage them and get feedback on your story and characters.

@Griffin if your printer is printing in rgb, and you're submitting cmyk that would be where your color discrepancy is likely coming from. Finding out which printing schematics they use is ideal before sending in the file for print. My printer also uses rgb (but it's more than 3 colors to print) . They've said that they do some tweaking to ensure it looks the same as the screen they get it on, but everything I've printed has turned out exactly as I wanted it to. I would follow their guidelines even though cmyk is traditionally what's used for print.

Color is very challenging and like anything it will take lots of time and practice to get. Keep in mind that value trumps color. If your values aren’t right then your colors won’t be either so if you’re working digitally try working in black and white first and then adding in your colors that match the values of the black and white version. More color does not mean more interesting.

Take a look at Pixar color scripts. They’re a great place to get an idea of how to use color. Everything in Pixar films feels very bright and vibrant but you’ll notice in the color scripts that they usually only use two colors and a majority of the time those two colors are blue and orange or a variation of them. That goes for a lot of illustrations, you’ll find orange and blue everywhere so I’d recommend starting with those.

You can also just steal color palettes from other artists! It’s free! There’s really no such thing as stealing colors though, nobody can own that so just find some color palettes you like and experiment but remember, values come first!

Ooh! This looks fantastic. Thank you @Stephanie-H !

I do have a new opening in my Patreon Crit level if you are interested. Check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/leewhite

Congratulations. I have done a lot of illustration for design agencies as I used to work for them. All I would say is in your contract make sure you are not technically doing 'work-for-hire'. Have a clause allowing you to say that you did the work and display it in your portfolio if you wish. You would explain that you created this for the agency and perhaps credit the art/creative director if needed. Have this even if it ends up being something that does not fit your portfolio in the end. Not all agency work will be portfolio worthy, it depends on the client and brief.

Most of the work I have done I cannot show as it is classed as the agency's work.

@AngelinaKizz The content of the videos is very good!