Illustrations for a Children Book

The book is about 2 naughty little squirrel gliders who learn about a grudge. This has a strong Australian theme. Please send me links to your portfolio.



The brief is  to give my publishers to get a flavour and style of the illustrations for the childrens book Chip and Clip.  I would suggest 6 samples or snippets that will include
-          Chip and clip– squirrel glider with accessory
o  Brightly coloured depiction of Chip and Clip – happy for them to be brightly coloured in non traditional colours or traditional browns. We will need to distinguish between them with either a colour or an accessory.


O  Love the solid/strong water colour effect not so much the washy/soft/translucent water colour effect
-          Other Australian animals that may be featured in the book eg bilby ? but on a much smaller scale, perhaps one like a bilby or a lizard or a spider
o  Children love detail .. When I read with my kids we love spotting the repeated details on each page like a tiny mouse etc its something on every page we read, I would like some little Australian animals to feature on each page so that they might be repeatedly used in all of the pages, this engaged the small child a little more in books I think
o  This image might be no larger than 10 cm in size for the sample, and even smaller in the actual book
-          Example of Australia bush eg brightly coloured gum leaves and blossoms
o  I love the brightly coloured gum leaves and blossoms by @claireishio (instargam). Something like this style would be great. Happy for you to put your own spin on it.

It would be good to have a snap shot to show the style
-          Cross section of squirrel house
o    I used to draw these as a child. It is the cross section of a tree, with rooms showing a house, furniture, wall hangings, lots of details.
-          Example of background trees/mountains/sky
o  Would be good to show a snippet of what a landscape might look like ..

Even if this is indicative and not the entire thing.
-          Your choice 
o  Go for it… what are we missing, what do you think we should show case from the story??
I want the illustrations to be intelligent (I think some childrens books are too child like and this then excludes the mid primary level kids), works of art (I know adults without children who have bought childrens books because they loved them, lets not exclude this part of the market by making the illustrations to babyish), I like detail (I know this is going to cost me, but if we can get it right it will be great I think), I want them to not be just illustrations but works of art (again I understand this will cost), with my own kids and those that I have taught Ive noticed in the early years that illustrations are a big part of the puzzle, they help the child make sense of words and concepts they don't understand, for older children who are still struggling with reading (and whose light globe hasn't gone on yet) the illustrations are an interesting part of the journey and help a child learn, often kids that have been left behind are left reading the "readers" or the baby books while their peers are reading the interesting books, I think this dosent help them progress, it actually works against them, good illustrations would transcend this hopefully.
T