Work with me
I’d love to work with you on your next illustration project! If you’d like more information about my terms of service, please click on the link below. If you’d like to discuss a project, please email me.
FAQs
If you’ve got questions about the process involved in working with an illustrator, read the following FAQs.
Budget
Professional illustration isn’t a hobby, so you will have to pay for quality. Cheap illustrations probably won’t do your book justice, so this is where you’ll need to think about how you want to represent yourself.
The Graphic Artists Guild has a Handbook that’s regularly updated to reflect current market prices. It’s the “industry Bible” so it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re serious about finding an illustrator. In 2013, they estimated that a 32 page picture book would be anywhere between $3000-$60,000 USD. You’ll also have to pay royalties since it’s the illustrator’s creative work.
There are things you can do to bring costs down – for example, you can have more white space, a smaller book or use black and white illustrations rather than colour. Money is time and all these things make the illustration process quicker. If a quote comes back over your budget, talk to your illustrator to negotiate whether reducing the complexity of illustrations could lower the cost.
Style
Every illustrator has their own style and produces work within that style. If you are after a specific style, it’s best to find an illustrator who does work within that style. Check out the illustrator’s portfolio to see if their art style is what you pictured. If you have no idea what you want, the illustrator may be able to give you advice.
Do not ask for work on spec because you’re indecisive about what style you are after. If you want test illustrations from different artists, make sure to pay them for their time. Otherwise, you’ll just have to use their existing portfolio to make the decision.
Decide whether you prefer ‘tight’ or ‘loose’ art. ‘Loose’ illustrations are sketchier and less polished, which can work really well for some picture books or graphic novels. They tend to be cheaper. ‘Tight’ illustrations are more detailed and take longer, so cost more. You don’t have to stick to only one either. For a graphic novel, it can be really stylistically interesting to have minor panels done loosely but then have tight artwork for climactic moments.
Scope
Before you speak to an illustrator, make sure you have prepared information about the book or project on hand. This includes things like the physical size of the book, as well as the number of pages. Be prepared to send over a full manuscript so they can get an idea for themselves and also know if it’s something they’d be interested to work on.
Decide beforehand what you want for the illustrations themselves too. Is each page fully illustrated or will the art be less expansive than that? Is the artwork in colour or black and white? Most artists nowadays work digitally, but do you want it to emulate more traditional art styles – for example, artists are able to recreate a watercolour illustration digitally now.
Keep a time frame in mind, but don’t expect things done overnight. Good illustration takes time and there will be many rounds of designs and revisions involved – so it’s not going to happen in a week. In fact, most picture books take about a year to be fully completed.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property can be tricky to negotiate when working on a creative illustration project. In most cases, the illustrator sells you a license to use the artwork, not ownership of the artwork itself. Although you’re paying, you probably won’t own the sole rights to the final illustration and the illustrator will want to showcase the work in their own portfolio. If you’re not happy with this, you need to discuss this upfront and spell it out in the contract.
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Payment
Your illustrator will likely want some sort of deposit upfront, most likely a third or a half of the full amount. This works as illustrators will generally charge on a per-project basis (as opposed to setting an hourly rate). You might then have milestone payments – for instance, when they finish the initial sketches. Or you might just pay the rest on completion. Occasionally, you might be asked to pay the full amount upfront but this is quite uncommon.
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Concept Development
The concept stage is where the illustrator figures out the composition for each of the illustrations – e.g scenery, expressions, actions etc. Naturally, they’re not going to waste time on full artwork for every possible iteration of a scene – so this will be very rough work. Do not be alarmed if the artwork looks unprofessional at this stage.
They’ll also work on things like page layout. You should bear this in mind when reviewing the art too. You don’t want key images getting sucked into the ‘gutter’ (e.g the gap between the 2 pages of a book).
Again, this will take a round (or rounds) of revisions before you’re both happy with the end result.
Sketches
The sketch stage is where the illustrator renders the concepts into pencil artwork. This is where the forms of the illustration take place. At this stage you can request changes to the forms and other visual details. You will go through another round (or rounds) of revisions before you’re both happy with the end result.
Final Artwork
Once the sketches have been approved, your illustrator will be ready to start on the final, polished art. This will be where your illustrations will get colour! At this stage you can request changes to the colours of the artwork. Once you’re happy with this and you’ve approved everything, they’ll send over the finished art and you’ll be ready to go to print! Yay!
