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How Do I Find an Illustrator for My Children's Book?

 If you're an unpublished author and have written a children's book, or are looking to do so and understand that the visuals are just as important as the story, this post is for you. I have compiled a list of questions I am frequently asked about working with an illustrator when submitting a proposal for a children's book. I love this question because 1, it's always great to meet people who are interested in writing books for children—we need more stories with a wider range of representation—and 2, it's a great opportunity to share what I know. Before I get into my responses there are two things I'd like to mention:
• My responses are for those who are interested in pursuing the publishing house route, because I have not produced any books using through self-publishing I can't really speak on what that process entails. If you're interested in self-publishing some of this might be applicable, but most is very different. So one of the questions you have to consider is: how will you get this book out in the world? With self-publishing a lot of the production, distribution, promotion, editing, etc. will fall on you but you pocket most of the revenue made from your book. Working with a publisher allows you to use their resources but you're paid in advances and royalties, which are percentages of the revenue made from your book. You have to weigh the benefits and disadvantages to decide what works best for you and your vision. • Another thing to note, I am speaking from the perspective of an illustrator/author who has worked with several publishing houses, but that does not mean my experience is the rule. Every relationship between an author, publisher, and illustrator is unique so please keep that in mind. How do I find an illustrator?When looking for an illustrator it really depends on the look and feel you're thinking about for the story. For example, if you want more realistic drawings, abstract, modern, or traditional. This is when working with a publisher helps if you haven't done this work before. Publishers have an in-house art director to offer guidance, and they have a lot of experience on how to pair the right illustrator with the right story. With that, it's often better to wait and see what the publisher or art director has in mind. Sometimes they have great insight on what the market needs, or have access to illustrators who are new, or know illustrators who have done work like this before or are passionate about the topic. There are so many factors to consider, but don't bog yourself down with this yet. Focus on getting your story completed.  I have a story completed, is it typical for the author to pay for the illustration up front or would a payment arrangement come if the book is published through the publisher? In self-publishing, I'm not sure if it's typical for a writer to pay up front, but if you do self-publish I recommend offering an advance, which typically is a chunk of money for the time the illustrator is putting in to illustrate the book, and then offering royalties, which is a percentage of revenue for each book sold. It's a fair way to share the wealth, especially if the book does really well. But it is really up to the illustrator. They can work with you to determine what makes sense for the budget and time. If you're going the publishing house route and really want to have some illustrations to accompany your proposal I recommend finding an illustrator you'd like to work with and offering a fee for them to do 2-3 illustrations to submit with your manuscript to help sell the book. Then when the rights for the book are purchased, the publisher can pay you and the illustrator an advance. The lowest advance I've heard for an illustrator doing a children's book is $9,000, which is sometimes broken up into 2-3 payments over a period of time from the beginning to the delivery of final artwork.   Don't be afraid to pursue a book deal without an illustrator though. Visuals always help with a picture book, so it is very important to have them incorporated into your proposal. Another way to sell the idea is by creating a really beautiful submission letter with some background info about your story and why this topic is so important to you. In your proposal consider creating a page featuring artists you'd like to work with, or a moodboard of images that represent how you imagine the look and feel of the book. Any tips on finding a publisher? I think the most important thing is to be clear on your story, be clear on the message, audience, and purpose before reaching out to any editor or publisher. Once you clarify those points that should guide you on who to reach out to. Choose your top three editors/publishers that make sense for the book. Look at their other titles and figure out where your book fits among them. Editors want to make sure it's the right fit, and it helps if you do the work for them first. Also, something important to think about, how will your book live beyond the shelves and pages? In this digital/social media world editors love hearing how you envision the book inspiring other content. Like educational material for classrooms, worksheets, events or workshops, and how this story can live online. Think about how you can build a whole story or brand around this book. It sounds like a lot but think of it as something fun. This doesn't have to be elaborate, these can be three bullet points added to your submission. I really hope this information helps. It's a lot to think about and can sound overwhelming but editors get so many submissions every day, and these are tips that can really help a manuscript stand out. The most important thing is to crystalize the story and be passionate about the message, and everything else will fall into place. Here is more information on submitting a proposal or manuscript:Chronicle Books offers great resources for submitting a manuscript, even if you don't submit to them I think it's great to read over their suggestions. I've used their guidelines to write all of my proposals.  And here is a great post about submitting Children's Books to Chronicle. On their blog they also have a great post on the book process from manuscript to book shelves. And more information on finding illustrators:Society of Children's Book Writers and IllustratorsSociety of IllustratorsWomen Who Draw

Andrea on February 26, 2019 in Art/Illustration/Design | Permalink| Comments (0)

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Campaign for ORA-C Jewelry

What a beautiful campaign shot by LM Chabot for ORA-C Jewelry.  

Andrea on January 08, 2019 in Photography | Permalink| Comments (0)

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Women Who Project: Meera Sethi

Women Who Project is an interview series highlighting women of color we admire and who inspire us in art and design. This interview is written by guest author, educator, and artist Tanekeya Word.


Who is Meera Sethi?
I’m a Canadian visual artist with an interdisciplinary practice. I ask questions about the relationships between migration, diaspora, identity and hybridity. I tend to foreground contemporary histories on the edges of representation, especially queer, diasporic and post-colonial moments.

I think about fashion and community a lot. The politics of dress is a persistent theme. Like what and who is fashionable, and why. I use a range of mediums to make work from this place, engaging alternative style histories.

How did you arrive at creating the Upping the Aunty project?
I began this project with the idea that I would explore the idea of the “Aunty” and challenge how we understand street fashion. I was seeking a way to honour the relationships with these elders and celebrate a sense of style that resisted conventional notions of western fashion and placed South Asian women and their sense of personal agency at the centre.

There is a trend towards street fashion photography, to capture (stylish) folk out and about in their everyday wear. I am interested in the way fashion is translated by those who are not the “cool and sexy” subjects of this kind of street photography.

Aunties in South Asian cultures are ubiquitous, they are part of our lives yet they are often ridiculed or at best ignored. They also have this “noeffsgiven” sense of style. Like, they care, but also they don’t. They might select this delicate cotton sari with eight colour embroidery, coordinate this with their jewelry and handbag and then throw on a pair or New Balance sneakers to make the walking easier. That’s not just smart, but stylish too. Kind of accidental style. It’s what’s happening on the margins of the runways and fashion blogs that I’m interested in. Read more

Andrea on October 08, 2018 in Women Who Project | Permalink| Comments (0)

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We Inspire Me: An Excerpt and Peeks

We Inspire Me is my latest book project, my fourth book—third authored, and my first book for adults. This book is a collection of essays, interviews, tips and advice from myself and 20+ contributors sharing about nurturing and empowering our creative tribes. Here is an edited excerpt from the intro and a sneak peek of the pages:

When I got the green light to write this book, I was totally thrilled. Here was my chance to bring together stories, essays, illustrations, advice, and tips related to the importance of building and nurturing one’s creative community. After coming off a successful book tour, I was reminded how important it is to be surrounded by people who want to see you excel and thrive, inspiring me to share that message.

I have to admit, though, that once I sat down to write and draw I kept getting stuck. How do you really teach someone about building a creative community? We all know that strong, supportive, and inspiring relationships happen organically. For example, you meet that one colleague who gets your obsession with vanilla lattes and instantly you two share daily coffee breaks, which soon buds into a dynamic professional relationship. Or you are seated at a dinner party and overhear another guest mention their upcoming trip to South Africa, where you have just returned from. You exchange email addresses so you can send them your list of recommendations. The next thing you know, you two are linking up regularly to share other travel tips, and then you end up going on a trip together. You can’t plan these kinds of things, nor can you force them. Special relationships like these just happen.

So after some thought I realized my intention here is not to teach anyone how to make a friend. Instead, I see this book as a resource to help readers examine their networks and learn how to utilize that group of people to find support, build community, and realize the power of that community. Read more

 

Andrea on October 03, 2018 in Art/Illustration/Design | Permalink| Comments (1)

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Current Inspirations: A Bohemian Disco

My current inspirations: faded colors from vintage clothes like pumpkin corduroys, pewter lamé bodysuits, and sun-bleached pink silk slip dresses; vignettes of dried flowers with sparkly disco balls and old rattan furniture. Fresh ferns paired with crinkled polyester in gold; and lounging ladies hosting a salon and serving old-fashioned cocktails on a lush patio.

Andrea on September 26, 2018 in Colors and Trends Research | Permalink| Comments (0)

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Young Gifted and Black

Last year I had the lovely opportunity to work with Quarto Kids and writer Jamia Wilson on a dream book project. I was invited to illustrate Young Gifted and Black, a book highlighting 52 iconic heroes of color from around the world. The roster included some folks I truly admire, like Oprah Winfrey, Wangari Maathai, Jean Michel Basquait, Ava DuVernay, Nelson Mandela, and Muhammad Ali. (Some of which I'm excited to share here.)

It was an honor to celebrate their stories, but most importantly it was a blessing to be able to create a book kids, especially kids of color, could go to to see different definitions of success and what happens when you follow your dreams. 

Andrea on September 21, 2018 in Art/Illustration/Design, My Designs & Illustrations | Permalink| Comments (0)

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My Illustration Class on Skillshare is Live!

I miss teaching so I am beyond THRILLED to share with you my first ever online class with Skillshare. It's called Illustration in Action: Creating Stylized Portraits. In this class, I walk through some tips and tricks for illustrating a portrait with the theme of celebrating someone we admire. With Angela Davis as my muse I share how I use fun color palettes, bold shapes, and expressive typography to craft illustrations that tell a story. With my mission to celebrate stories that are often untold my hope is that you will be inspired to use visual tools to capture those stories.   I am super excited about this course and excited about sharing it with others who are looking to expand their illustration skills. If you're not keen on illustration or feel intimidated about using programs like Adobe Illustrator, that's ok, you can still watch to learn how I research references, where I look for inspiration, what I keep in my sketchbook versus my idea book, and some best practices for being inspired responsibly.  Click here to join: Also, you can sign up here to try the premium membership for free. I can't wait to see what you create! Please share with me on Twitter, IG, or in the comments below who you will celebrate in your portrait.

Illustration in Action: Creating Stylized PortraitsAn Online Skillshare Class by Andrea Pippins

Andrea on February 21, 2018 in Artists/Designers to Know | Permalink| Comments (0)

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I Had a Baby

Fly used to be the first place I'd go to announce things but it has been unintentionally replaced with Instagram as my go-to for sharing projects, inspirations, sentiments, and life changes. Like the fact that I was pregnant and had a baby boy. His name is Isa James Bhur, he's going on four months and he is super wiggly, funny, and delicious.

This little boy makes me laugh and smile every day. And some days I'm left questioning my parenting skills.

Isa and I go for walks, read books, we cuddle, go to baby salsa, listen to NPR and go-go music and baile funk. He's my little living room dance partner, and my fika (Swedish coffee break) date when daddy is at work. We stare at each other. A lot. And while I try to telepathically figure out his needs, I imagine he's thinking, "this fool has no clue." Throughout all of this, Isa tolerates my million kisses a day. 

I never imagined in a billion trillion years that I would have a child in another country, far from everything I know (like my mother did with me 30+ years ago when she left Brazil for the U.S.). And although that was the most challenging part of my pregnancy, and now child-rearing, I feel extremely blessed to have a baby in a country that respects the sacredness of motherhood and the preciousness of a child's early development and well-being. Despite the distance I am truly happy to raise Isa here.

We are only four months in and those months have flown by. As I get to know Isa, I'm getting to know a different me. Another layer of me is emerging, which is thrilling and terrifying all at once. While navigating a path so many other women have traveled for centuries, and with so much information, input, and advice I'm always trying to remember to define for myself what it means to be the mother Isa needs—simultaneously learning what it means to be this being experiencing this life in this moment. 

And that's been the biggest reminder for me during this new process, truly living in the moment, which I thought I had figured out before his arrival. But now I really get it. This all happens so fast: relationships, moving, school, careers, love, joy and sadness, babies who (God willing) grow into adults. So remembering to savor every moment has been key for me. 

I'm glad I've finally made the time to sit and write something here. I've been wanting to share the news on Fly for a while but between the new baby schedule and wanting to write something long and "profound" it kept getting pushed to the wayside. So with the little bit of time I've been able to carve out to write this post I realized this experience alone is "profound" enough and nothing much more really has to be said except, I had a baby.

Andrea on October 19, 2017 in More about Me, More about Fly | Permalink| Comments (8)

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My Illustration Process

One of my favorite things to learn about is how other artists, illustrators, and designers create. I'm super curious about their process, how much research they do, what materials they use, or what's happening in the background while they're working. It's all so interesting to learn how they get from inspiration to final creation.

In interviews and when working with young designers it's a question I get asked a lot, so I thought I'd share a bit about what is involved in my illustration process. This is a general look at how I created illustrations for projects like I Love My Hair, and most of the digitized illustrations I do for projects with the National Museum of African American History and Culture licensing project, Lenny Letter, and the recent BlackStar Film Festival graphics.

Depending on the project and topic the project typically starts with me looking at references or gathering inspiration. Usually with commisioned illustrations, clients have a pretty clear vision of what they're looking for, so I take that information and run with it. After gathering all the details I need (dimensions, printed or digital, projects goals, etc.) the sketching stage begins. This ideation part of the process is my favorite part so I end up doing A LOT of sketches. My go to tools for sketching are: a Pentel Twist Erase Mechanical Pencil and a Staedtler eraser which is great because it has minimal crumbling. At time, I also use Sharpie Markers and Uniball pens for sketching.

Once I have a direction I'd like to pursue the next step is to ink my sketches. Whether the end result is a coloring page or digital graphic for a Instagram, my drawings are always inked. To get a range of line sizes I also use Sharpie Markers in this stage, along with Micron Pens (my faves!). For a really clean line that will be scanned I use layout bond paper which is placed on top of my sketch, and then sketch is traced. The drawing on the layout bond paper is what will be scanned. I never ever trace directly on top of the original sketch to avoid having too many messes and having to erase any pencil lines. My goal is to have a pretty clean scan that requires minimal if not any manipulation when taken into Photoshop.

Layout bond paper is super great because it has perfect transparency, the texture is pretty flat so the ink doesn't bleed, it isn't marbly like tracing paper which can be terrible for scanning, and it allows me to make clean adjustments to my sketch. Overall layout bond paper gives you a clean line and a clean scan.

Next, I take that final drawing and scan it in using my Epson scanner. For coloring pages that need to be in black and white, like for I Love My Hair, I scan the drawing at 400 dpi in color to maximize the quality of the scan. Since the final file will be in grayscale (since it's just black and white line) I change the color mode to grayscale later to make the file size smaller. For projects like the 6th Annual BlackStar Film Festival I wanted to maintain the integrity of the drawn line and keep the drawings in color so the color mode is kept in CMYK.

For other illustrations that will be digitized in Illustrator (like some of the BlackStar drawings that were turned into icons in Adobe Illustrator—see below) I will scan between 150-300 dpi and always making it bigger than what I need, so at double the size or 200% at least. The black and white drawings will be taken into Illustrator where I will live trace or convert the line to vector shapes. Live trace can be terrible because it makes the lines wobbly and funky. So I always have to go in and clean the vectored shapes. If I have more time (which usually isn't the case), instead of inking the drawing I would scan the sketch and open it in Illustrator to redraw the drawing with the pen tool. I love the pen tool.

Now that the shapes are vectorized I can add color, change sizes, and adjust accordingly. For final files the illustration is prepared in Illustrator, for coloring pages or drawings with textured lines the final files are left in Photoshop.

And that's my process for most illustration projects.

Because my life has become so mobile, with me going back and forth between Sweden the States and other travels, I've been trying to be better about using my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. I was introduced to these tools last spring when I was invited to participate in a Adobe workshop and they gave a group of us artists an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to experiment with. They're great because they allow me to make on the go. But I really love the feel of pen and paper, so it's been tough for me to make that full transition. I have to say, though, so far the end results are very similar. My goal is to keep playing so I can eventually eliminate scanning and live tracing. I like the idea of using one device and having minimal materials to carry.

What about you? What digital tools are you using to make your art? What's your process?

SaveSaveSaveSave

Andrea on June 06, 2017 in More about Me, More about Fly, My Designs & Illustrations | Permalink| Comments (5)

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Black Pepper Paperie Co.

Recently my friend and fellow artist/designer, Hadiya Williams, launched her new business and shop, Black Pepper Paperie Co.—a lovely stationery, clay ware and maker's studio based out of D.C.

There you can find beautifully patterned clay dishes, jewelry, textile and paper products. I'm fanning out over her mark making and limited color palette of black and white. 

She also offers some fun freebies, like free downloaded patterned paper that can be used for wrapping paper or collage. Download here. And see some of her inspiration on her IG stream here.

Andrea on May 17, 2017 in Art/Illustration/Design | Permalink| Comments (1)

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