For several months, I had been on a mission to find a children’s book illustrator. The first part of my mission involved just myself and multiple (fun) trips to my local library and Barnes & Noble bookstore. Before reaching out to anybody, I knew that I needed to get clarity on the illustration styles that suited my story, and to figure out what I really wanted. At this point, I didn’t really know.

I looked through many cute children’s books, and as I did, I started to hone in on the illustrations that I resonated with. And then I asked myself why. If there was an illustration that I loved, I observed the details of the style, the colors, the medium, and the type of artwork.

I figured out that I wanted bright, happy colors, and preferred either a watercolor style or something like a particular series of children’s books that I used to read as a kid in Japan (picture of one of the books that I still have from the series above). Eventually, I had narrowed down the basic style that I was looking for, and was happy to have more clarity. Now I could go research and contact some illustrators.

I first looked around on online resources such as Fiverr, and then communicated with a few illustrators, but nothing felt quite right. Then, after doing some more research, I posted a job on Upwork for a children’s book illustrator.

In my job posting, I wrote a synopsis of what my children’s book is about- a children’s book about water safety in the ocean. I added in that the main lesson of the book is about not panicking in the event of a water safety situation, and that they might have to personify Water at some points, because Water is a character. I noted my budget, my preferred turnaround time, how many pages of illustrations were needed, and that the book would be published in both hardback and ebook formats.

Then I specified that this was a work-to-hire contract, but that I would promote the illustrator’s name throughout the book, as well as throughout my networking and advertising for the book. We would put the illustrator’s name on the cover, the title page, and optionally include an ‘about the illustrator’ section in the back, with the ‘about the author’ section.

Also, I would continue to promote them afterwards. For example, if I could connect them with another author that might be a good fit for their services, I would. They could also definitely use the images or pages in our book as advertising for their own personal brand. That way, the project would prove more valuable and beneficial for them.

Then, I started working on a storyboard for my scenes, and waited for (hopefully) the right applicant to come in. I wasn’t sure how many applicants I would receive, and was curious about the process. A couple weeks later, I had received almost forty proposals, so I was happy! I then took a solid week to review the different proposals and portfolios, and carefully went through all kinds of lovely artwork examples.

I finally narrowed it down to five illustrators, and reached out to the top two illustrators who’s artwork made me happy and fit what I was hoping for… The rest of the process to be continued in Part Two to be posted next week 🙂