Art of Reading: Illustrators at Work

Illustrators At Work

Children's book illustrators use a great variety of media to interpret and tell stories. To show you some of the styles and tools illustrators use in their studios to create children’s books, RIF and TeachingBooks.net have prepared a series of slide shows of several illustrators at work.

Click on an image below to open a slide show. (Please note, in order to view each slide show, you must have Flash 6.0 downloaded on your computer. It is free and easy to install. Just click here to install Flash.)

Many Tools Create One Illustration
While some illustrators use only one artistic medium to create his or her books, some illustrators use many tools. Michael Emberley, for example, uses many different tools to create his illustrations. See him create his bird character from It’s So Amazing using pencil, marker, pastel, watercolor and plastic coating.

Pencil

Vera B. Williams solely used color and black pencil to illustrate her award-winning book Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart.

Marker

Vera B. Williams, David Macaulay and Betsy Lewin use markers in distinctly different ways to illustrate their books for children.

Collage

Bryan Collier assembles his illustrations using magazines, watercolors, glue and other media while Denise Fleming creates her illustrations with multi-layered and multi-colored paper pulp.

Brush

Chris Raschka, Betsy Lewin and Michael Emberley use brushes to illustrate characters and emotions.

Fruits & Vegetables

Saxton Freymann illustrates his books with edible art — expressive carvings made from fruits and vegetables.

Etching

Arthur Geisert uses a traditional copperplate technique to illustrate his books. This form of etching has been essentially unchanged for approximately five hundred years.

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