The Miss-Adventures of YaYa and Leen
After months of creating and illustrating, I’m almost ready to launch my new children’s picture book! My first book, Sunbelievable, took several years to produce, but I Want Cake! emerged in under 1 year.
Why so much less time? With Sunbelievable, I had to learn not just how to write a children’s book, but how to illustrate, produce, publish and promote. As a first-time, independently published author/illustrator, every task demands new knowledge and skills. I quickly became the master of mistakes—ones I shared in a guest article written for a wonderful blog: The Creative Penn: Thoughts on Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing.
The key points in 5 Essential Tips for Creating a Children’s Book apply just as much now as they did then, if not more so!
- Don’t take writing skills for granted.
- Develop a meaningful message.
- Can you sum up the message in a short sentence?
- Work with professionals on illustrations.
- Work with a professional children’s book designer.
When I wrote this article, Sunbelievable hadn’t yet earned 7 national children’s book awards, including Mom’s Choice Gold—nor did I dream it ever would. Each award encouraged my work on I Want Cake! Not only did I avoid unnecessary mistakes, but discovered a new passion . . . illustrating!
Much to my surprise, many of the awards recognize the illustration style—blending real photographs with digitally manipulated backgrounds. The combination produces rich visual imagery that makes images “pop.” More recently, I learned about magic realism—a style of painting where “sharply rendered and detailed elements, both in the foreground and background, are used to develop an air of mystery or ambiguity.”
To learn more about magic realism, I invite you to visit my website: EasyPhotoshopMagic.com where I offer webinars, tutorials and live trainings. You’ll discover essential tips and tricks I used to create Sunbelievable and I Want Cake!: techniques you can use for any type of images, including, book illustration design, social media, and so much more!
Please stay tuned for more updates on my new children’s picture book: I Want Cake! ~ The Miss-Adventures of YaYa and Leen.
