book illustrations Archives - GoatKeepers Press

Finishing a picture book isn’t so different from finishing a novel. Of course, “Ducks Love Hats” has no text, but each and every illustration must be checked and rechecked. If I’m lucky, I will catch any mistakes while editing this picture book.

How the Illustrations Were Done

The Creating Picture Book course started with five young people. Family problems took three of them away just as we were starting to draw the parts of the illustrations.

What I was left with were the four ducks in a variety of poses and eight hats. I had already volunteered to do the backgrounds. What I lacked, and two of those who had to leave were good at, were the people. People are a big challenge for me.

All of the ducks and hats were scanned into my computer. All of the background pages were scanned in.

Next, I did people outlines. There were two family groups of parents and two children. They did various things so I needed lots of different poses for each one. One saving part was being able to reuse some of the poses as the families came at different times in the story. Once the outlines were scanned in, I painted the people.

Using layers each person, duck and hat were put into the illustrations. I like using layers for this as I can resize and move them as needed.

A happy duck family swims away with their hats in “Ducks Love Hats” by Karen GoatKeeper and others.

Assembling the Picture Book

The layered illustrations are merged, saved and inserted into the book. The book itself is a Word document with 0.1” margins.

Then editing this picture book began. Hats were missing. Ducks were missing. People weren’t in the right places.

This is why I save the layered illustration as well as the merged one. I can open the layered one, make the needed changes, merge and insert the corrected illustration.

Final Touches

Title page and cover are the last things I do. However, editing this picture book will go on as several people look over the pages of the book itself without the title page and cover. I’m hoping they don’t find any more mistakes.

The illustrations are done. Text is on the illustrations. Everything is ready for formatting your picture book, you hope.

Front Pages

Just like in a regular book, picture books have title pages. There is a copyright page as well.

(Although I am focusing on a printed book, if you are doing an eBook version, you can ignore the page count. An eBook requires a Table of Contents page added right after the copyright page which should be right after the title page in this format. Don’t forget to resize your images to 8” by 11”. Put them on that size pages using the 0.01” margins using In Line with Text.)

Title pages usually have some cute image taken from the book. If your book is about rabbits, the title page should have a rabbit image along with the title and author.

Copyright pages aren’t always in the front of picture books. Sometimes this information is put on the last page. If it is in the front, often the image on the page makes a two page spread with the first page. Other times it is an introductory image for the book.

Back Pages

In some picture books about animals or history, there is a last page or pages giving more information. I did this in “Waiting For Fairies” with a Nature’s Cast about the night creatures appearing in the book. In “Redcoats and Petticoats” the last page is about the spy network in New England during the Revolutionary War.

formatting your picture book starts with the pictures — This is one of two pages at the end of “Waiting for Fairies” telling about the creatures appearing in the story. I did have to crop the edges to get the right fit for the website. That brings up another issue with picture books. The edge of a page descends into the spine on one side. When you create your images, be sure you keep the main images a good half inch from the edges of the page.

Counting Pages

Traditionally printed picture books have a number of pages evenly divisible by four, usually 32. The reason goes back to how the books are printed. Each print page sheet has four book pages on it. You can see how this works if you take a calendar apart.

Count your pages. Is the number a multiple of four? If not, perhaps you can add or delete a page. Or you can add a blank page. Another way is to use a page for cute images related to your book as is done “For Love of Goats” or “Diary of a Spider”.

Remember your title and first page have an odd number to put them on the right side.

Creating the Pages

I work in Word so my pages must have a margin. If you also work in Word, formatting your picture book needs the margins set at 0.01”.

Resize your images to fit the page size you are using using your paint shop. Do not resize or crop them after putting them on the book pages.

Each image is placed on a page using In Line With Text to lock it into position. Even if your title page has lots of blank space on it, create an image of it the same size as your other images. All of these images should be JPEGs so all layers are merged.

Once all the images are on your pages, you have finished formatting your picture book interior. Now you need a cover.