What I've learned after 7 months working on my Children's book
- Ari
- Sep 18
- 3 min read
Behind-the-scenes lessons from my first children’s book project
Wow I really thought I would never reach this day, the day I finished up the illustrations of my first ever children's book, called “A World Within" about a young girl who loses her grandmother then goes on an adventure finding her own world within. It's been a journey of so many ups and downs and many lessons learned. I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned along the way so if you're just starting off on your own personal children's book journey these tips can hopefully keep you grounded and give you insights on things you may come across.
1) You will drastically improve
Not going to lie, when I started I did a lot of research and planning on characters and environments but I didn’t really think about what's next or the future of the book, I didn’t even think about how I would market my book until I was a few pages away from finishing.
This is kind of a “duh” moment of course you're going to improve, but it was crazy. I was so heads down on illustrating starting from page one by the time I was halfway done, my illustrations looked like a different artist worked on the previous pages. So I was kind of at a crossroads. Should I just finish the whole thing then go back to the beginning? Should I go back now and fix the pages up? Well I ended up doing a little trip with my mom just to step away and take a break then came back and decided to redraw all of my characters as aliens instead.
About halfway through I redrew all of the characters and because I had been practicing, my drawings looked a lot better than before so I just went back to the beginning and made a copy of the older versions and removed the original characters and redrew them.
2) lots of iterations, character drawings and research in the beginning
This is for the very beginning preplanning stage before you even choose your characters or story to play around with different animals, people, personalities, and ideas. It’s all part of the process, this is the part where you just let your mind play freefully with no expectations at all.
I truly believe this is part of the process of finding the right story, environment, and characters. You may think you know what you want to write about but it could end up being a completely different idea in the end.
3) Less is more
As a self taught graphic designer turned illustrator my thought process was “let me add a bunch of things in the room to make it look detailed that way I'll look more professional but in the end what REALLY mattered was the lighting, shading, texturing, and composition of the image. I do think adding detail is very important but I think when you're starting out I would focus more on this stuff then begin to add more detail once you’ve covered the basics.
4) Draw the characters bigger
Halfway through when I decided to redraw my characters on all of the pages another thing I realized was that I needed to make the characters a lot closer. It was also something I began to notice when researching other children's books. Having the character closer allows the reader to feel as if they are more a part of the story and they feel more engaged with the character. In my initial sketches I actually drew the character so small, I thought just making her silhouette would be enough, wow was I wrong. Always draw the character closer so the reader feels more connected.
Final Thoughts
After seven months of working on my children’s book, I’ve learned that the journey is just as beautiful as the destination. From reworking characters to experimenting with color palettes, every step has taught me something new about my style and storytelling voice. I can’t wait to share my first ever children’s book with you in just a few months! If you’d like updates (and the chance to grab a special signed copy), feel free to sign up for my email list in the button below.
