How a Non-Artist Illustrated a Children’s Story

And lived to tell the tale

Some years back, I penned three children’s stories for a website called Storyweaver.org.in.

Writing the text was the easy part since the tales were based on happenings from my life. But children’s books also need illustrations. Thankfully, Storyweaver had a library of free images I used for my stories.

Shapeshifters…

I asked my daughter for feedback on the stories. She used to read them to the kids.

“The stories are fun,” she said. “But the images are disorienting.”

I knew what she meant.

The Storyweaver images were all over the place. There was no continuity from one page to the next.

Almost every screen featured the work of yet another artist with their distinctive styles of drawing and brushwork. It was hard to relate to shape shifting characters whose appearance changed every time you turned the page.

TukMuk the Turtle

Around this time, I had just completed my fourth piece titled: TukMuk the Turtle.

I did not want readers to be confused and distracted by a mishmash of images. This time, I would go with a single illustrator.

But who?

I needed nineteen frames. Illustrators did not come cheap. And I was not getting paid for the story.

(Storyweaver doesn’t pay its contributors. It is a non-profit literacy program, and kids worldwide have free access to the stories.)

I eyed myself in the mirror. There was only one person who could take on the job. And that person was no genius at either drawing or painting.

Still, I bought a drawing pad, pencils, watercolors, markers, and fine-point pens. Good tools might turn me into a good workman.

I drew a little girl and filled in the outline with watercolors. The resulting picture was not pretty. Not even halfway to cute.

My heart sank. If I couldn’t come up with one usable illustration, how could I do nineteen?

“Master Portraits”…

Over lunch, I lamented my lack of drawing skills to my resident IT guy.

“Use an app,” he suggested. “Sketchbook?”

I downloaded Sketchbook. Then I watched YouTube videos about how to draw cartoon characters.

I set to work.

The “Symmetry” and “Predictive Strokes” features of the software tidied and softened the jagged lines of my sketches. Still, I made a ton of mistakes with the coloring. It drove me nuts.

So, I took a shortcut. I created “master portraits”of the characters and objects in the story — kids, dad, turtle, lake, tree, and so forth.

Then I copy-pasted these portraits with minor changes into the frames as needed.

As per one of the YouTube videos, I added “non-essential but interesting” elements to create a child-friendly ambiance. A caterpillar, ducklings, and a beaming sun.

The illustrations took waaay longer than the text. No surprise there.

My finished artwork was no work of art. My seven-year-old granddaughter could have drawn the characters. But in the context of a children’s story, the part-stick figures worked reasonably well.

Two months later, I checked on my piece and almost fell over in surprise. Three of my illustrations had been picked up by other writers for their stories.

Something ventured, so much gained…

TukMuk the Turtle (written originally in English) has thus far been translated into three Indian languages.

I have two more children’s stories in the pipeline. The first is a narrative poem about an idiosyncratic crow. The second one spins a tale about an inexpert sorcerer and a skilled but witchy dairywoman.

(“Witchy dairywoman” sounds seriously weird, but the story passed the smell test with the grandkids.)

There are many more characters in these stories than in TukMuk. Illustrations would be a steep climb. So, I am weighing my options at this point.

Still, I feel elated and content about TukMuk. I stepped outside my comfort zone. And I successfully illustrated my children’s story.

Thanks for visiting! 🌼🌻

If you liked my story, check out this one:

JoAnn Ryan, Thanks a bunch for publishing my story! 💐