What I Use to Illustrate Picture Books Digitally

You may know that I illustrate picture books, but did you know that every picture book I’ve illustrated since I started e.g. Creative Solutions has been done completely with digital media? 

Now, what does that even mean? 

Quite simply, it means that everything I draw, I draw by hand on my iPad with my Apple Pencil - no pens or paper here! 

It does not mean that I use AI image generators in any way, and it also does not mean that I use pre-made assets or clip art from the likes of Canva. If you’d like to know more about that, you’ll find my opinion, and some helpful facts for you to consider if you’re thinking of using them below. 

So, what do I use?

Mostly, I use Procreate - and I love it! 

I’ve tried various drawing apps, and Procreate is by far my favourite. While I do use Photoshop for touch-ups on my computer, and I use InDesign for formatting and book design, most of the work I do for picture books is done in Procreate. Procreate is a super accessible option for many people, and it is more than enough to tackle this kind of project, if you're looking for an easy way to get started Illustrating your own picture books!

Procreate is what I recommend if you’d like to give illustrating a picture book a go, but It's also the preferred app for many Illustrators who've been working digitally for years (like me)! It is only available on iOS, so if you don’t have an iPad already, that’s an investment to consider, but Procreate itself is a one-off, very reasonably priced app. What it does for less than the cost of a takeaway dinner is constantly blowing my mind! 

Procreate also has lots of support and it’s very widely used, so it’s so easy to find tutorials and learn everything you need to illustrate your picture book digitally, even if you've never created art digitally before. 

It’s worth mentioning that Procreate Dreams, which is designed for animating, is also great value and I have a lot of fun in it, but I can’t speak for Procreate Pocket (which is designed for iPhones) and wouldn’t recommend it for illustrating picture books because, quite simply, your phone screen isn’t big enough and the fact that you’d have to finger paint doesn’t make it a viable option in my professional opinion. 

You do you though, if you wanna try it out! 

Why don’t I illustrate picture books with traditional media? 

Traditional media, e.g. paints, pens, pencils, collage, etc. comes with a little bit (read: a huge amount) less convenience than digital illustration. That’s honestly all it is. 

I first bought my first iPad to do digital art because, as a watercolour painter, I wanted to be able to create art when I felt like it, without taking up the entire lounge room in our 75 square metre home, having to wait for the paint to try, constantly having to buy new supplies, and set up/tidy up every time I wanted to paint. 

I love creating art, but once you factor in the time it takes to do all of the things you have to do before and after the fun part, it doesn’t feel so fun anymore…

Working for clients, I also find it a much more enjoyable process for everyone involved to be working digitally. Say my client wants me to move the main character two centimetres to the left, no problems digitally, but traditionally… oh boy, that means scanning everything up and editing it digitally anyway, or starting again! 

When you illustrate a picture book traditionally, whether it’s with paint, pencils, or whatever else you choose, it takes a lot more time. And, ultimately, there’s a scanning and editing process which is done digitally afterwards anyway, and it just seems like a lot of work to me… 

I love painting with real paints, digital paint doesn’t move in the same way and happy little accidents can lead to beautiful masterpieces, but working digitally means I can offer my clients a more affordable option, I can work to tighter deadlines, and it also means we don’t have to find somewhere to store all of the physical copies of drafts and final artwork! 

More notes on Canva and AI

Now, I could go on and on about how elements in Canva, such as images, are owned by the design creator; therefore, you do not own copyright over them. I know, however, that any original works made in Canva, you do have copyright over. To get it straight, I don’t have anything against Canva! I think it’s a great tool for many people, but it isn’t for illustrating picture books. 

If you’re using Canva elements to tell a story visually, pretty soon, you’re going to run into the issue that you won’t be able to find your characters/background items in the exact position you need them, what then? 

With regards to AI image generators (which I’m going to refer to as AI, and I don’t want any designers reading this to get mad, because I don’t mean Adobe Illustrator), global copyright laws are murky here, but I think that we can all agree that using a computer to generate images that are a patchwork of art that has been used without consent is not ethical. 

AI also causes some issues with character consistency, like Canva, and while this may improve with time, any artist who looks at AI images will know straight away that something is off, and subconsciously, so will your readers. 

Want help illustrating your picture book?

If you're not ready to tackle the illustrations for your picture book this time around and you want to work with an illustrator instead - let's chat! I'd love to hear about your story and see if I'm the right artist for the job.

A picture book spread from Fledgling's First Flight next to the iPad I used to draw the art.