The Calming Circle Children's Book

Role Art Direction • Design • Illustration • Copy Editing Project Illustrated Children's Book

Project Objective

Illustrate and design a children's book with a bedtime calming routine.

Challenge

Wally and the Whatifs, the first children's book I illustrated, took me almost a year to complete. I had a much shorter timeline with The Calming Cricle, as the author wanted it published for the holidays. I had to find a faster way to complete the illustrations.

Art Direction

Approach

We decided to use the author's children as the kids in the book. It was so fun turning them into little characters. I used an Apple pencil and taught myself how to draw on the iPad. It felt foreign at first, drawing on glass, but it was so much quicker than drawing on paper and digitizing each individual image. My first illustration took 5 hours, but by the time I got to my last illustration, I was able to complete them in less than half the time. It was easy to copy and paste parts of the images into new images by drawing everything digitally.

Overall Outcome

The book hit the #1 spot on Amazon for Children's Daily Routines and continues to sell today. The author was so pleased with the outcome that she has commissioned me to illustrate her second children's book, out at the end of 2020.