Picture Book Illustrations
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Stories grow in words and images. The writer’s job is to tell a story in words. As we read the writer’s words appear as pictures in your head. The picture book is a special case, a collaboration of words and pictures on the page. In the picture book world it is common for a writer to create a story in words alone, but they write knowing the finished book will have pictures with their text — they must trust that the illustrator make pictures that are faithful to the story.
Illustrating someone else’s words is a lot of responsibility. My job is to read the writers words and watch the pictures that pop into my head. I try to get on paper what I see when I read — keeping in mind that I can show more than the words say.
I’ve put together several pages of picture book illustrations and added links where you’ll see how I build stories working in both in pictures and in words.
Making a Picture Book
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Here’s one picture from a story about a car in a junk yard that’s never been published. I put this story, and the pictures that go with it, in a dummy book format — that means I made a sample book stapling together pages of draft pictures to show what the finished pictures would look like. To see the dummy click here.
Grandpa’s Story Hidden Within My Story
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In Reunion, two boys are fooling around in a model-T car and it takes off down the hill. The idea came from one of my Grandpa’s stories about the first cars and horse poop…. Take a look at the book, and when you get to the car picture you’ll find a link to my grandpa’s story.
Picture Books
Making stories in pictures and words is exciting. I’ve put together pages of picture book illustrations and added links where you’ll see how I build stories in pictures and in words.