Childrens Illustration Sketch

So I've been thinking a lot about illustrating for children lately. As a father of two wonderful kids under seven years old, I read a lot of children's picture books. I think it's a lifetime goal of most illustrators to do a children's book at some point in their career. As I dreamed about what it would take to make that happen for myself, I realized that I didn't have any work currently in my portfolio that demonstrated an ability to illustrate for kids. So while a lot of people see my work and say "you should do children's books", I don't think I have anything that would appeal to an art director looking to find a match for a children's author. I think they'd want to see an ability to illustrate children and animals, and consistently illustrate characters across multiple pieces. So I decided to do a series of illustrations for the four seasons, with the same boy, girl, and dog in each.

In honor of the 100+ degree temperatures we've been having over the last couple of weeks, here is my sketch for "Winter":

I'm pretty happy with it. For the snow being kicked up around the sled, I was going for a mashup between classic hot rod painted flames and traditional Japanese woodblock-print styled water. It's coming off a bit harsh in the sketch but I already have a newly-created fluffy soft texture made up for the snow that I know will soften the effect and hopefully provide an interesting contrast.

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Tags: Sketch, childrens