Portfolio Content

Children’s publishing is a wonderful market for new artists. Children between the ages of 3-7 can’t read yet, or their skills are bare minimum. These rich stories can’t be illustrated with stock art or photographs because the story is particular to its own needs. The story requires its own creative and colorful visuals that tell the particular story along side the minimal words. This creates a dilemma for the art buyer. They can not see the actual art that will go into the book, therefore they have to take a “leap of faith” when assigning the project. How do art buyers chose and assign an artist to a project?

The answer lies in the portfolio by the artist. Several pages of an illustrated story must be shown in succession within the portfolio. This shows how an artist “visualizes” the series of events within the story. The artist shows character development by showing the same characters in different situations, scenes and emotions. The art directors can see consistency in character, color, compositional abilities and creativity.

Always present 1-2 stories in your portfolio. This will take up 4-6 of the required 10-15 pieces and really make your portfolio work for you. The stories can be made up or classical. It only takes a few images to show off what the buyer needs to see. The remaining 9-10 images can be of anything you desire.