I thought you might like to see how I go about creating an illustration, so here is a video of something I painted recently.

In this instance, I was doing a simple picture of a vehicle for a board game, rather than for a book, and it made sense to trace a photograph as a starting point. Normally, for book illustrations, you have to sketch out a composition yourself, with characters, buildings and vehicles in the position you want them – as you will never find a photograph that matches up with what you see in your head!

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If you liked the look of this, why not have a go yourself? Instead of a light box you can put a piece of paper over a computer screen and turn the brightness up. Drawing can feel daunting, so this approach gets you past the drawing stage quickly and lets you develop your painting skills.

Notes on materials

I use thick watercolour paper (Daler Rowney 300gms NOT – cold pressed) which helps to give the interesting textures in the painted areas. My watercolour paints are Windsor and Newton – Cotman range, which are not very expensive, but give you nice intense colours. You won’t get the same results with thin paper and cheap paints! Note that I rarely mix colours in the palette – I tend to use them straight from the blocks to keep the colours vivid. You can overlap several colours on the paper if you want to achieve a colour that you don’t have in your set.

If you have any questions or want to see more, let me know!