When searching for types of illustrations for children’s books, keep this in mind:
- what age group is the children’s book for
- types and styles of illustration suitable for the age group or style of the book
- how many illustrations your book will have and what kind of illustrations (full page, half page, etc.)
Let’s answer your big question directly… what are the types of illustrations for children’s books and which is the right one for your book?
You are reading: Illustration styles for children’s books
All of the above points will help you answer that, and I’ll explain each one in more detail.
what makes a great children’s book illustration? The most successful children’s illustrations of all time differ widely, but they also have similarities that make them great.
the illustrations of where the monsters are, good night, moon, dr. seuss, i wish you more, tuesday and i want my hat back are all different but amazing in their own way.
Understanding that can also help you get great illustrations. but we’ll talk about that later.
To plan your book illustrations, it’s a good idea to start with style.
Ideas for the style of illustrations in your children’s books
The first thing is your idea of how the illustrations should look. cartoon? bold and bright? a little creepy? crazy? beautiful and delicate?
Your illustrations should complement your writing style and the message of your children’s book. sweet watercolor illustrations, for example, can be a great match for a soft and touching story. but they might not work well for a monster truck book!
Different styles could suit your story, so don’t feel limited. and most styles can be adapted to match the quality of your book. for example, the same cartoon style can be funny, silly, cute, or even shocking, depending on a few slight variations.
It’s a great idea to study some of the best children’s book illustrations to get an idea of what you’d like for your book. there are many places you can do this, including your local library.
Tip: Study fairly recent books, as the children’s book industry has changed. the books of 30 years ago do not correspond to what is sold now. study books published in the last 10-15 years.
here are two pages where you can see some beautiful examples:
what age group is your book for?
Also keep in mind the age group your book is for. And, in case you don’t have a clear age group in mind, I have to mention that it’s crucial. children grow rapidly in their understanding and sense of humor, and what they like changes. a book for a 1-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 10-year-old are all different.
Although the story, word count, and types of books vary from age to age, most illustration styles can work for any age group.
Your options are many. the main thing to consider is whether a child of his age will like and understand the drawings. too abstract will not work for young children. too childish can turn off older children.
the most important advice here is: look for other books for your age group to see what sells.
What are the types of illustrations for children’s books?
You should also decide what kind of illustrations you want in your book. this will affect the overall look of the book, but also how many illustrations you need. what I am referring to here is the “size” of the illustrations.
There are four types of illustrations for children’s books:
- point illustration
- half page illustration
- single (full) page illustration
- extended illustration
So what are they?
Spot illustrations 
These are small, simple illustrations to liven up a page with text. they are usually a quarter page or less with little or no background. spot illustrations can be placed as a chapter header, corner decoration, or next to or within a body of text. they are often black and white or done in a sketchy style.
Half-page illustrations 
as its name says, this is an illustration that occupies half a page. while it can be detailed, due to its smaller size, the background will be less detailed than a full page illustration.
Single (full) page illustrations 
This is an illustration that takes up a full page. here we can pull out all the stops and include a lot of detail as it takes up a full page. you can also make illustrator leave room for your text if needed.
Spread illustrations 
spread over two full pages, usually with text on the illustration. while a combination of different illustration sizes makes a beautiful book, making the entire book double-page spreads will make it amazing!
If you’re making an illustrated book and the budget allows, choose illustrations for the entire book. if not, take as many single page spreads and illustrations as you can.
You can also make your book interesting by mixing the different types of illustrations throughout. your illustrator should be able to help you come up with a design that works well.
How many illustrations should a children’s book have?
Another important point to consider is how many illustrations the book will have. this comes down to the number of pages and what kind of book it is. for example, a picture book has many more illustrations than a middle grade novel.
Calculate how many pages the book will have. 24 or 32 pages are common for picture books.
It is important to understand, however, that in a 32-page book, only 28-30 pages are for the story. sometimes even less, as some printers paste the first and last page on the front and back covers.
Here’s an example of a common book layout to give you a better idea:
You will see that you have 14 sheets and two individual pages for the story and the illustrations.
note: the minimum number of pages to print with kdp is 24 pages. With many print platforms, the page count will increase in increments of 4. In other words, if your book has 26 pages, they will add two blank pages to the end. check this before printing.
look at books for your age range to see how many words tend to go on a page and per picture.
Illustrated books typically have full page or spread illustrations on each spread.
Early readers may have slightly fewer or smaller illustrations, but mostly they also have illustrations on each spread. they can be extended, full or half page illustrations.
First chapter books vary from having illustrations on every page to only one illustration per chapter. They contain everything from point illustrations to single-page illustrations (and sometimes extended illustrations).
what should you not do when illustrating a children’s book?
There are some definite “don’ts” for children’s book illustrations. Knowing this can help you get the best illustrations for your book. some things come down to taste or opinion, but others are widely agreed upon. those are the ones I’ll cover here.
Avoid this when getting illustrations for your children’s book:
- don’t compromise on having the best possible illustrations for your children’s book.
- if you’re not an illustrator, don’t illustrate your own books.
- don’t hire an illustrator with no proven track record and great reviews/testimonials. At the very least, chat with them long enough to get a real feel for what they’re like. make sure they turn in good work, on time.
- don’t work with an illustrator who doesn’t have experience with children’s books. you get some wonderful illustrators, but if they don’t have book illustration experience, they won’t know the requirements. this can lead to incorrect file sizes and formats and many other problems! so only work with them if you know all the exact requirements for your ebook and print and are willing to guide them closely.
- don’t use the same angle, distance (foreground, middle or wide), poses , etc. in all your illustrations. make sure they are varied.
- this is more about your writing, but make sure the illustrations don’t repeat the text. avoid putting descriptions in the text (eg “red bike”, “blue shirt”, “black hair”), because the illustrations will show these things. they do not need to be in the text. so if it’s not critical to the story, leave it out. if critical, make sure the illustrator knows how to draw a red bike and not a green one.
- Continuing from the last point, make sure the illustrations match the text. If you’ve read a lot of picture books, I’m sure you’ve seen examples where this isn’t the case. it’s annoying to read, “the children were playing outside,” but the illustration shows them inside.
- don’t try to show too much in the illustrations. they should add to the story, but if the illustrations should show too much, it will become confusing, cluttered, or lost on the reader or child.
- don’t be too conceptual or abstract…especially for younger children . I can attest to this as my almost 4 year old has repeatedly asked me things like “why is there a red light around him?” Children, especially young children, do not understand many of the concepts that we have learned as adults. be aware of that.
- don’t micromanage your illustrator. they are professionals (or should be!) and can greatly improve your book… if you let them! don’t tell them in detail what to draw (unless a certain setting or action or specific objects, colors, races, etc. are essential to the story or text).
The latter needs no further explanation. give the illustrator the manuscript (if it’s short) or short art notes, and then let him do his thing! they may surprise you with how much they enhance your book with their creativity.
what is an art note? it is a very short note that says what should be illustrated.
for example:
- “billy is walking in the woods”.
- “the girl and the boy are swimming at the beach”.
In case you’re wondering how not to, here are the two examples above with too much direction:
- billy, dressed in a blue shirt and brown pants and tennis shoes, walks in a pine forest with some rocks and bushes. we see him from behind, from the waist up. there is a path, but mostly dense trees.
- the girls and the boy are swimming at the beach. she wears a red and white striped swimsuit. there are some clouds, seagulls and some people and umbrellas.
See Also: Randolph Caldecott Medal | Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)
If it should be a pine forest because it’s important to the story, let the illustrator know. if it doesn’t matter, leave it up to the illustrator.
Also, if they do the sketches first (which they should), you’ll have a chance to give feedback and make sure the artwork is to your liking.
There are exceptions to this rule. for example, nonfiction needs accurate illustrations most of the time. you may need to give exact descriptions and even reference images. Or the book may be for your son or grandson and you want the main character to look like them. it’s okay! send a photo, by all means.
The bottom line is, for all the details that aren’t important, don’t stifle the illustrator’s creativity by dwelling on them.
children’s book illustration styles
style is a pretty broad term. can refer to cartoon or realistic style, whimsical, stylized, watercolor, charcoal, etc.
or may relate to an individual artist’s style of drawing or painting, or to the “hand”. of course, choose an illustrator with an individual style that appeals to you.
I won’t talk about individual styles here (since they are as varied as there are illustrators in the world!), I’ll just go over the general styles you might choose for your book illustrations.
Before I get into all the different styles, also note that there are two main divisions in illustrations. these are traditional vs. digital.
- Traditional illustrations, in short, are paint, pencil, charcoal, pen, any medium on paper.
- Digital illustrations are done on the computer.
Illustrators can and often do combine these two. digital illustrations have become increasingly common for children’s book illustrations.
one is not better than the other. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but in the end it all comes down to a matter of taste (and budget: traditional art is usually more expensive). It’s also good to keep in mind that digital has developed to a point where it can closely mimic all forms of traditional art.
Let’s review the main styles of children’s book illustrations.
To keep things simple, I’ll split the styling into two parts:
- the genre or drawing style of the illustrations
- the medium used to create the illustrations
It is also important to understand that I will share one or a few examples of each, but in each case there are many more variations that will give it a different look and feel. I can’t share all the possibilities in one article, so I have chosen only a few. if you want to see more of a certain drawing style or medium, google is your friend 🙂
genre or drawing style #1
For children’s books, drawing styles include the following:
- cute or childish cartoons
- wacky or funny cartoons
- realistic
- whimsical
- line drawings
- schematic drawings
- stylized
Looking at the examples below, you’ll see that the styles overlap. all styles from number 4 to 7 are also cartoon or realistic. whimsical drawings can also be stylized, and so on.
cartoons: cute or childish
Cartoon style drawings have exaggerated features and are not real. style can vary and some of the other drawing style categories listed above are subdivisions of “cartoon”. I divided the cartoons into two main styles, the first being cute or childish. this is the style seen in many children’s books, especially for younger children.
examples:
Copyright: Marti Whiting-Pearson Copyright: Mo Willems Illustration Copyright: LeUyen Pham
Copyright: Total Language Connections
cartoons: wacky or funny
Because of the exaggeration of the drawings, cartoons lend themselves perfectly to fun or quirky illustrations.
examples:
Copyright: Dr. Seuss Enterprises Illustration Copyright: Lee Wildish Copyright: Tedd Arnold From Spaghetti with the Yeti
realistic
children’s books are almost never hyperrealistic. “realistic” here refers to fairly true-to-life proportions, versus a cartoon style that is not true to life. In children’s books, realistic illustrations can be simple or detailed.
examples:
Illustration Copyright: MacMillan Education SA Illustrations Copyright: Illustration Copyright: Erin E. Stead Illustration by GetYourBookIllustrations Sal Murdocca From A Sick Day for Amos McGee
whimsical
whimsical illustrations are charming, childlike, carefree, dreamy, fun, and colorful.
examples:
Illustration Copyright: Valeria Docampo Copyright: Emily Winfield Martin Illustration Copyright: Seng Soun Ratanavanh
Illustration by GetYourBookIllustrations Illustration by GetYourBookIllustrations
line drawings
Line drawings are outline drawings that are not colored and have no gradation (no different colors or grayscale). is (usually) drawn in one color and only uses lines.
can also be used for coloring books.
examples:
Copyright Evil Eye, LLC Copyright Marti Whiting-Pearson Illustration copyright: Denise Brunkus Illustration by GetYourBookIllustrations From Junie B Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus
schematic drawings
Schematic drawings are drawings that are not refined and still look more like rough sketches than final illustrations. they can vary in their refinement and be coarse, or just barely coarse. they are often colorless. schematic drawings are often expressive, which can be a nice touch.
examples:
Copyright: Amber Layne Nieves Copyright Disney Illustration Copyright Quentin Blake From Winnie the Pooh From Matida at 30
stylized
stylized illustrations are not realistic and do not have conventional and natural forms. they are often simplified or made up of geometric shapes or patterns. they also tend to have flat colors.
examples:
Illustration Copyright: Amélie Falière Copyright: Jon Klassen Illustration by GetYourBookIllustrations
#2 medium
Although they are not the same, style and medium are often used interchangeably or overlap. this is understandable, since the medium influences the appearance.
for example, watercolor is considered a style. although, in the strictest sense of the word, it is a means. Although it has a different quality, you can create different styles of watercolor illustrations. here are four watercolor birds to show what i mean:
The following media are used for children’s books:
- watercolor
- acrylic
- gouache
- pencil
- charcoal
- ink or pen
- woodcut (no longer common)
- metal engravings (no longer common)
- lithography
- collage
- multimedia
so these last two are a slightly different category, but we can divide digital illustrations as follows:
- freehand digital illustrations
- stylized digital illustrations
watercolor
Watercolor is a method of painting with water-based paint. use more aqueous paint and you will get more transparent and smoother images. these illustrations are mostly whimsical, delicate, gentle, or sentimental. less watery paint makes for sharper, brighter images.
beatrix potter’s preferred medium was watercolor: http://www.artnet.com/artists/beatrix-potter/
On this page are two other beautiful and modern examples of watercolor illustrations: the three questions and the wind.
See Also: What Happens if You Dont Read Books? | Best Book Summaries
illustration by getyourbookillustrations
acrylic
Acrylic paint is a quick drying paint and can also be used watery or thicker than watercolor which makes the colors and texture more opaque.
Jennifer O’Connel’s preferred medium is also acrylic. http://www.jenniferoconnellart.com/portfolio
watery
gouache is another type of paint and can be remixed with water to change the consistency. can be used dry, which is why it’s called a dry brush effect that is textured. here is an example of ana roque sá:
can be used with a “normal” or medium consistency, like illustrator mary blair does, to get a result like this:
or it can be made aqueous and then it’s similar to watercolor, like this: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-subjects/animals/dina-brodsky-bird-paintings/
pencil
there are graphite pencil drawings (greyscale) or colored pencil drawings.
i miss my grandfather and the gift falls off by jin xiaojing are examples of colored pencil drawings.
so is the work of raymond briggs, for example the snowman: raymond briggs receives the lifetime achievement award – news
charcoal
soonchild by russell hoban, illustrated by alexis deacon, is an example of charcoal illustrations. https://theaoi.com/2014/12/11/soonchild-book-review/
olivia the pig has mostly charcoal drawings, with hints of red added. you can see a couple of illustrations here: https://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/raise-a- reader-blog/olivia-book-high-energy-kids.html
pen or ink
the books by shel silverstein are famous examples of pen and ink illustrations: the books by shel
john tenniel also illustrated alice in wonderland with pen and ink.
wood cutting
woodcutting is a technique of cutting an image out of wood and then using it for printing.
edmund evans did the illustrations for the house that jack built by chopping wood.
there are more examples here: book illustration: the woodcut
This method is rare today and would require a large budget for your illustrations. I’ve included it as artists mimic this style by drawing (not cutting actual wood). so if you like this style, you could get a similar look for your illustrations.
metal engravings
Metal engraving was the most common way of creating book illustrations from the late 16th to early 19th centuries. can achieve details that wood cutting cannot. There are different types of metal engraving, but in short it consists of producing images on metal plates, which are then used for printing.
As with woodcutting, metal engravings are now rare and expensive, but illustrators can imitate them in ink or digitally. you can see traditional examples here: https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/book-illustration-engraving-and-etching/
a modern version might look like this:
Click to enlarge Illustration by GetYourBookIllustrations
lithography
Lithography is another printing process. a flat surface is oiled in areas to create an image. the oil repels the ink and thus an image is created by adhering the ink only to the desired areas, which are then printed. You can also create different colors in an image by making multiple prints, one color at a time.
While not as common as most of the other media on this list, lithography is still used.
the terrible troll bird is a good example of lithography.
collage
collage is made by gluing different materials such as cut or torn paper, photographs or fabric onto paper or a support.
eric carle, author of the famous very hungry caterpillar, made all the illustrations in his book in collage. he painted tissue paper with acrylic for his collages. you can see examples here: eric carle | carle museum
mixed technique
This is a combination of different mediums. mixed media is common in children’s book illustrations. examples include watercolor and pencil; or ink, charcoal and any type of paint combined.
here are examples where children’s book illustrator isabelle arsenault used gouache, pencil, and watercolor together.
digital: freehand
These illustrations are created digitally, in various types of software. freehand digital art is drawn as one would draw on paper. therefore shapes and lines are organic (not perfect geometry, exact straight lines, etc.). there is often shading as well.
There are subcategories in this medium, but I will only mention freehand raster and freehand vector illustrations. Raster illustrations mean that the images are drawn in pixels (small dots that make up the images on a computer screen). these drawings tend to have more natural shading, more organic and “imperfect” lines, and more closely resemble traditional art.
With vector illustrations, the information is stored as mathematical statements. for our purposes, the only thing that matters is appearance. vector artwork tends to have smoother, more “perfect” lines and shapes (for example, perfect circles), flatter colors, and hard/sharp edges in shading (rather than soft, fuzzy-edged shading).
As digital illustration software advances, there are more and more ways to make raster images look like vectors and vectors look like raster illustrations. but there is no need to get too technical in this article.
This is a broad category, and these illustrations can be extremely varied.
here are some examples from getyourbookillustrations’ portfolio of freehand raster digital illustrations:
and here are some examples from getyourbookillustrations’ portfolio of freehand vector digital illustrations:
digital style
As with traditional illustrations, stylized digital illustrations do not have natural conventional forms and are often simplified or composed of geometric shapes or patterns.
here are some examples from getyourbookillustrations’ portfolio of stylized digital illustrations:
What types of illustrations for children’s books are there? you already know!
There’s more I could say on the subject, but this gives you a pretty comprehensive overview of the types of illustrations you can choose from.
In short, the best way to choose the style of illustration for your book is to combine your personal preference with research on what suits your age group and gender. And the best way to do that is to look at lots of children’s books!
Is there anything in particular about this topic that you would like to know more about? then let me know in the comments below so I can answer your questions.
At getyourbookillustrations, our mission is to provide beautiful and affordable illustrations to help you bring your book to life. if you want to chat, schedule a call here.
or if you’re ready to get on with your book, fill out our form to get started.
I would love to read your comments!
See Also: Free Printable Mandala Coloring Pages
- what style(s) of illustration do you think you would like for your book?
- did I leave out some important styles or mediums?