Hiring an Illustrator

I recently hired my first illustrator for my first picture book, and I’ve gotten several questions asking what the process was like.

Well, it was tough!

Not because illustrators are hard to find—on the contrary, there is a plethora of great illustrators—but because I wanted to hire them all!  

I finally narrowed it down to one great illustrator with whom I am extremely pleased so far, but I had better not get ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning and see if I can answer some of your questions:

1.  How did you find an illustrator?

I used Upwork to find and hire my illustrator. Upwork is a freelancing platform that makes hiring and finding work very simple. There are hundreds of freelance websites, and I’m sure they’re all great, but for this first project I chose Upwork upon recommendation from other trusted authors. As the client, I simply posted a detailed job offer—summary, timeframe, desire for contractual agreement, request for cover letter, etc.—with the price I was willing to pay. Interested applicants then made bids on the job, explaining their skills and providing links to their portfolios. I had responses from illustrators all over the world! Discussions began from there.

•  How did you chose one illustrator from a list of so many?

I narrowed down the list to 10 potential applicants and conducted what might be described as a written interview consisting of several questions. In that interview, I asked if they would be willing to send me a sample sketch of a provided scene from my book. All but one of them agreed to the sample sketch. This was fun the part! Over the next week, different visual interpretations of my characters and setting came pouring in. Some were drawn exactly as I had pictured them in my head; others took me by surprise. It was exciting! It was amazing! It was terrible—only because I knew I would have to reject all but one of them. They had put precious time and energy into sketching those scenes. Why is life so unfair?

•  What made your illustrator stand out as a final choice?

After much consideration, I made my choice and offered the job to an illustrator located in Mexico City. His style was not what I had pictured in my head. It was actually better. During the selection process, I had showed the sketches to my children and other close friends and family. He was consistently the number one pick. I also liked what I had seen in his portfolio. But what might have been the determining factor in my choice was the fact that he went above and beyond what the other illustrators had offered in their sketches. He put a lot of detail in the scene, used different font sizes to emphasize important words, and arranged the text on the page in a way that was visually stimulating and fun to read.

•  Did you enter into a contractual agreement?

Yes! He gladly accepted the offer. Although his bid was a bit higher than my payment offer, his skills were worth the extra cost. I signed and sent him the contract; he signed and returned; and we went from there. I created the contract myself using a template provided by another author. You can easily find free author/illustrator contract templates online and then personalize them for your particular project.

•  Who is formatting the book? You or your illustrator?

I expressed in the job description my desire for an illustrator who was also able to design the cover and format the book for print. To my delight, I discovered that most of the applicants were able to do so.

• Was it easy for you to let go of some of the control?

Yes and no. My book is actually a true story involving my daughter, so I had a certain vision in my mind for what that story should look like, and I had every intention of hiring an illustrator who could produce that vision. Two of them actually did, and I loved it! However, I was reminded of what two very wise individuals had told me. Marcy, my writing coach, stressed time and again the importance of allowing the illustrator to tell half of the story through the illustrations. If you exercise too much control, you stifle creativity, leaving you with a lower-quality product. Alexis, my life-long best friend and fellow book lover, encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone. “Illustrations make people pick up the book,” she told me. She was right. They both were. It occurred to me that producing a book that looked the way I wanted—no matter how personal those characters were—might be a disservice to my audience. I wanted them to have the most enjoyable experience possible and, to do that, I had to give up some control.

What’s great about my illustrator is that he asks for my input. After signing the contract, he got to work right away, sending me character sketches with different styles to choose from like round features vs. more angular features. He took into consideration the realism I desired while still trying to keep it visually inviting for children. He asked me for personality and character traits to help him portray the characters. He presented me with different coloration techniques to choose from. And he’s only been at work on my story for one week! The more we communicate, the more I trust him, and that has made it easy to let go and give him the creative freedom he needs to make my book great.

I hope this answers some of your questions. If you have additional questions about my first illustrator experience, feel free to contact me here.

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Photo by Retha Ferguson