In this article Im discussing:
- How I found my illustrator that has illustrated ALL of my coloring books to date
- What you should do before finding an illustrator
- How much illustrators cost
- How YOU can find your illustrator
#1 - How I found my illustrator that has illustrated ALL of my coloring books to date
The first thing I understood was that I wanted to find an illustrator that had already created coloring books. This was important to me because I didn't want to have to teach someone how to actually do that part of the job. I wanted someone who already had experience doing it and already had a good quality images so, I tried to find the illustrator by going to the biggest retail place there is to find books which was Amazon. I tried to searched through all of the coloring books for adults that I liked but couldn't find any that had realistic black women on the covers.
So, what I did was started looking through children's books once I found some that I liked one of the first things I did was to look to see if the illustrator was listed on the book(s). Amazon offers a great look inside feature so I was able to look inside of all of the books that I liked. I found one but it didn't have the illustrators contact information so I Googled her name to find her social media as well as her email address. Then, I contacted her to introduce myself, told her a little bit about what I was looking for (including the number of pages, the size of the book and the type of contract).
#2 - What you should do before finding an illustrator
It is extremely important that before you start looking for an illustrator you know exactly what you want. You need to know the type of images that you want for your book because you're going to be the one have to paint a picture for the illustrator to bring your images to life.
One way you can get some ideas or get inspiration is by looking at things from everyday life. If you see a dress that has flowers on it and you love it take a picture or screenshot that dress to explain to the illustrator that you want the image to have this dress on. You may also want to go through your potential illustrators portfolio and see if they have any images or designs that you like that they can create something similar to for your artwork.
#3 - How much illustrators cost
If you are looking to get quality original illustrations for your coloring book you can expect to pay at least $50 for an image so let's say you have 24 images like I do in my coloring books, you can expect to pay at least $1,400 to get the whole coloring book done. If $1,400 for a coloring book is out of your budget you can use sites like Creative Fabrica and get pre-made images for a fraction of that cost or you can also go places like Upwork where you can negotiate the cost.
You can create your own images using sites like CANVA where you can make an inspirational coloring book and you can do that for free.
#4 - How you can find YOUR illustrator
You can use Freelance sites like Upwork or Fiverr. Just be sure to review the commercial licensing to be sure you will have the rights to use the images.