Mark Mitchell | How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator

Who is your child character (really)?

Posted by Mark Mitchell | Apr 19, 2018 | children's book illustration |

Join us for the live workshop on Thursday, April 26 with multi-award winning illustrator (and now author-illustrator) Juana Martinez-Neal. Juana received the 2018 Pura Belpre Medal for Illustration for her art for La Pincesa and the Pea, a beautiful indigenous Peruvian retelling of the European folktale written by Susan M. Elya (Putnam/Penguin.) She’s illustrated books for Candlewick Press, Roaring Brook Press, Penguin Random House, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Disney Press and Macmillan. She paints with acrylics, colored pencils and graphite on handmade textured paper to create gorgeous textures and depth in her paintings. No stranger to national recognition for her art, Juana won an SCBWI...

Workshop with children’s book agent Christy Ewers

Posted by Mark Mitchell | Mar 15, 2018 | Art instruction, Author-illustrators, Children's book art, children's book illustration, Children's book publishers and publishing, Illustration course, Illustrators, Painting |

Book cover art is crucial, says children’s book agent and art rep Christy Ewers of the CAT Agency. More important than an irresistible title or the author’s eager fan base. Especially for a middle-grade novel, where it’s often the only image to beckon a young reader into formidable gray pages of dialogue and prose. (Christy shows some examples here.)A mock cover can be physically sent as a promotional postcard, posted on Instagram or emailed to editors and art directors who might then forward it to the rest of the editorial team. Not only does the right cover sell books. It can sell an editor on an unknown artist or an entire...

Drawing kids in action next week in Tracy Bishop’s workshop

Posted by Mark Mitchell | Feb 20, 2018 | Art instruction, Children's book art, children's book illustration, Children's book publishers and publishing, Illustrators |

You heard it in the video above: Action speaks loudest in the kids’ book art you create – especially to the kids who are your main reading audience. Tracy Nishimura Bishop’s own illustrations for children’s books in the trade and educational markets set a superlative example for this. Whether in black and white or full color her book spreads are freeze-framed action-adventure dramas. And that’s her assignment for next week’s live stream workshop: “Draw three or more kids in motion in a scene together.” Anthropomorphized animal kids are OK, she adds. But humans and/or animals alike should interact with...

Happy Valentines Day!

Posted by Mark Mitchell | Feb 13, 2018 | Author-illustrators, Children's book art, children's book illustration, Illustrators |

Felicia Bond is the author-illustrator of The Day it Rained Arts (T.Y. Crowell/Harper Collins.) She’s also well known as the author-illustrator of the Pointsetta series of picture books, also published by T.Y. Cowell/Harper Collins) and the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series, written by Laura Numeroff and published by Harper Collins. She received her BFA in Painting from the University of Texas at Austin and took classes at the School of Visual Arts after moving to New York City to pursue a career as a painter. She worked several jobs, including waiting tables, illustrating botanical books, painting scenes for a children’s...

A workshop with illustrator Patrice Barton

Posted by Mark Mitchell | Jan 17, 2018 | Children's book art, children's book illustration |

A few years ago I talked with children’s book illustrator and friend Patty Barton in my classroom at The Contemporary Austin Art School about her illustration process. I’d recently bought my first ‘pocket camcorder’, a Kodak zi8, had never shot much digital video before and it certainly shows. The lens moves a lot. People still complain about it on YouTube. Toward the end of the clip, you can hear students arriving for class and moving their art tables across the floor. Yet in our impromptu interview, over the room’s noise and mild confusion, Patty did a super job of show-and-telling her...