The Girllustrators

Tracy Bishop is both a children’s book illustrator and designer extraordinaire! She earned her degree in graphic design with a concentration in illustration from San Jose State University. Tracy’s clients include Cost Plus, World Market, The Gymboree Corp, Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, Palo Alto Jr. Museum and Zoo, EandI Designs, and Stanford Jazz Festival. We wanted to interview Tracy about her use of technology in her illustrations because her work retains the analog warmth of traditional media while being created almost completely digitally. Please enjoy Tracy’s interview as well as her beautiful illustrations.

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? At this point I’d say my illustrations rely about 90-100% on technology. I do thumbnails and concepts in a sketchbook then I move on to drawing in the computer. I LOVE watercolor. I used to do watercolor paintings and used the computer only for minor touchups. Then I had my son and the studio became his room. After that the only place for me to paint was on our dining table. It became so hard to keep on working a little bit on the dining table and then putting everything away for meal time. It also became apparent to me that leaving my work out with a toddler running around wasn’t the best combo either. So that’s when I made the decision to try to find a way to move totally to digital — but only if I was able to find a way for the process to be satisfying and to achieve the watercolor look that I wanted. It took a long time of studying and experimenting and I’m finally at a place where I’m happy with creating illustrations digitally.

What applications do you use? I use Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create my art.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? My Cintiq. That’s the best investment that I’ve ever made.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? The best part of using technology to illustrate is it’s easier to take more risks and be bold with things like composition and color. It’s easy to move things around and to play with color so there’s no excuse for NOT doing some studies before going to final. This flexibility can also turn into a curse really quickly. You can noodle around and be indecisive very easily too.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I’m currently making more illustrations and prepping for a SCBWI Illustrator’s day (eeek, it’s in a week!). I’m also revamping my website soon. The good thing about switching to a new style is it feels like a new beginning. The bad thing is I’m scrambling to replace all of my old watercolor only illustrations in my portfolio with new digital ones.

David Kirk’s children’s book career began when his hand-made toys were discovered by a book packager! In 1994 his first book, Miss Spider’s Tea Party, was published. It’sfilled with Kirk’s characteristic brilliant colors, dynamic compositions and infinite details. Miss Spider went on to become not only a beloved series of books, but also a television series on Nick Jr., a CD-ROM game, not to mention countless toys and products. Kirk has created numerous other equally delightful picture books, such as the Nova the Robot series. The Girllustrators are honored that he took the time to answer our technology questions!

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? These days, I’m mostly using very old art techniques. Only in preparation do I use any modern technology. Even that’s fairly peripheral. I use Photoshop to enlarge drawings to a correct size and sometimes manipulate sizes of elements within a picture. I suppose another use of technology is finding pictures on the Internet. When I need to look at animals or flowers or any sort of image, I love to use Google image search for reference. I used to have to go to the library and spend lots of money on overdue books I would use for the pictures.

What applications do you use? Photoshop, Google.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? Again, when I make a painted book, I could live without any of the gadgets, but Photoshop is very helpful to move the design process forward.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? I love being able to scan work and show it to people who need to see it immediately. I like not having to rely on Fedex or the mail.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I’m currently working on a variety of painted children’s books in the style of my earlier painted work - Miss Spider’s Tea Party, for instance. I’m using only the technology I listed above. I could mention a few other things - I used lots of technology in books relating to the Miss Spider TV show on Nick. All that was Maya and assorted other 3D rendering programs. A lot of other new technology is being used on iPad apps relating to Miss Spider. That stuff is based on my books and stories from the TV show. It’s all technology, but there are other people using it and it’s not really my department!

Learn more about David Kirk’s books here.

Janee Trasler, author and illustrator of many books for children, says she thoroughly enjoys her job. And it definitely shows! Whether spending time with Janee in person, or reading one of her books, get ready to giggle!  Of her latest book, Caveman, A B.C. Story, Kirkus says -  “F stands for FUN here.” I couldn’t agree more! Her delightful characters painted in rich vibrant colors and their antics will have you rolling! Janee has written and illustrated books for Scholastic, Sterling, Little Brown & Company, Random House, Houghton Mifflin, and more. Her whimsical illustrations have also appeared in magazines, newspapers, billboards, cartoons, and products. Here’s what Janee has to say on using technology in her work.

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? 100% relies on technology. From thumbnails to finished art—I do everything on the computer.

What applications do you use? Corel Painter, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and Flash.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? Wacom.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? The undo command. It gives me the freedom to experiment with no fear. I also love that I can keep iterative versions along the way.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I have two book dummies going right now. Both will be completed 100% on the computer. I’m also learning Action Script to improve my Flash skills.


Thank you, Janee!  To view more of Janee’s work check out her website and blog.

John Nez, a very busy Seattle-based illustrator, has worked on more than fifty children’s books. His illustrations sing with attitude, color, fun, and lots of textures. In addition to creating artwork for everything from board books to historical fiction, he writes and illustrates some of his own imaginative stories, including The Twelve Days of Christmas in Washington and Cromwell Dixon’s Sky-Cycle, a story of high-flying invention. John was nice enough to answer a few questions about using technology in his work.

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? About 80% of the work is digital. I usually do a very rough sketch with photoshop… then print that out and draw a finished drawing with real pencil on vellum. I like the texture of the real paper and the ability to flip the drawing around to any angle. Then I scan the finished drawing back into Photoshop and process it… adding color, texture, shadows and all the rest.

What applications do you use? Photoshop is my favorite. It even does vector art, so I rarely use Illustrator or anything else. I do use Indesign for making book dummies and I use Bridge for keeping track of everything. So the three applications that I always have on my dock are Photoshop, Indesign and Bridge. 

I’m now learning to make interactive ebook apps using a Photoshop extension called Kwiksher. It’s way cool. Since it has sound, animation and all kinds of cool effects. It’s like making a movie. Lights, sound & action. The question is whether or not it’s possible to actually make any money from ebooks.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? Photoshop.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? Well, looking back on the past, how I used to have to go to the copy shop and print out 35 pages of 11x17 art and then package it up and Fedex it off to the publisher… sure seems like a lot of extra effort. (Though I did get out and about more then… which probably was a good thing) In the ‘good old days’ I’d often get the specs for jobs that were all wrong… inaccurate type placement, etc. Faxes were the worst… they’d stretch the image and leave out critical parts entirely. Now though, with a PDF everything is exactly in place and the right size and ready to go.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I’m working on some book projects… and I’ll be using everything. Real paints, real paper, scanned images, photoshop, wacom and lots of my basic talents. Oh, and I forgot to add… it all begins with a pencil! The drawing is the main thing… above and beyond any other bells and whistles. It’s the drawing!

For more on John’s process, visit The Studio section of his website for some wonderful step by step demo’s. 

Russ Cox draws brilliantly colored, energetic cartoon illustrations for Kellogg’s, Crayola, McDonald’s, and PopCap Games. Not surprisingly, his style translates beautifully to animation, as seen in his e-cards for American Greetings and interactive web menus for AOL. Cox grew up in Tennessee, and studied art at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design after his family moved to the East Coast. After college he spent more than a decade working in design and marketing firms, but not quite feeling at home. When he set out on his own, he decided to specialize in illustration, and name his studio after his beloved cat; hence Smiling Otis Studio was born. Cox and his wife and kids now live in Pittsfield, Maine, where he decompresses by taking in the (often snow-coated) scenery and picking on his ol’ banjo.

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? 100%. I use the internet for reference and research. Digital camera for photo reference. The internet for communications with my clients (email, websites, social networks, etc.) Plus a bulk of my illustrations are digital. I still sketch by pencil and paper but they need to be scanned in so I can use them as a template. I have a Wacom Cintiq to draw over top of the sketches.

What applications do you use? I use Adobe Illustrator as my main software for illustration. Lately, I have started experimenting in Photoshop and Painter, trying to achieve a more painterly look and feel.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? That is a hard one to answer. Everything I use (see above) serves a special purpose in what I do. But if I had to answer, then it would be Adobe Illustrator since I have been using it since it first came out. My Cintiq would be second.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? For me it allows a lot more experimenting especially when it comes to color. I like placing colors into my illustrations using various theories and if they do not work out or look good, i can delete them and try something else. This saves lots of time. If I worked traditionally, I would have to start over each time. This experimenting translate over to my traditional pieces that I do for myself.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I am working on a couple of books at the moment for various publishers as well as characters for my commercial clients. Using all of my digital tools not only saves lots of time, revisions and tweaks are easier to do.

Melinda Beck is a Brooklyn-based illustrator, animator and graphic designer whose fabulous work includes everything from illustration for the

children’s literature market to animation, to hand lettering.

Melinda has worked with a number of high profile clients – The New York Times, Random House, Target and Nickelodeon – just to name a few. Check out some of her dynamic animation work for Nick Jr here.

She has received two Emmy nominations as well as awards from and publication in annuals including American Illustration, The Art Directors Club, Society of Publication Designers, Communication Arts, Print Magazine, The Society of Illustrators, The Broadcast Design Awards and The AIGA. She was kind enough to answer our questions below.

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? 50%, I create my work or pieces of it by hand and then finish it on computer.

What applications do you use? Mostly Photoshop sometimes Illustrator

What digital tool would you never want to do without? My Epson 10000xl scanner. I like to create artwork that is a hybrid of digital and analog pieces

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? Speed and ease of use, I discovered long ago I don’t have the patients to paint flat colored backgrounds with gouache.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I regularly create animations for Nick Jr. I love stop motion animation but neither have the time nor budget. So I make 3-D objects, shoot them with digital camera, collage them together in Photoshop and then hand the Photoshop files off to an animator who uses After Effects to put it all together.

Lalena Fisher has a wealth of experiences in the design and illustration world. Her delightful illustrations have graced children’s textbooks for clients such as Oxford University Press, Scholastic, and McGraw-Hill. She also designs logos, posters, books, and websites for a variety of clients ranging from fine artists and musicians to small businesses. She has also created characters and backgrounds for Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues and The Wonder Pets, and designed information graphics for The New York Times. She works both traditionally and digitally, depending on each client’s needs. Lalena is currently working on several of her own children’s picture book stories, and a short animated cartoon. She is also a songwriter and guitarist, as well as a member of the Girllustrators!

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? For my ink and watercolor work, the computer plays a part in about 20-30% of the process. I start with a sketch in Photoshop using my drawing monitor so that I can move the elements around until I am happy with the composition. Sometimes I’ll plan out the colors too. Then I print and transfer the sketch onto paper, and do my ink and color work. Then I’ll scan in the almost-finished piece and make a few final tweaks and fixes. But I sometimes get assignments to create digital work, because the client wants a very graphic, hard-edged, computer art look, and also wants to retain the ability to make changes later. In that case 100% of my process is digital, from sketch to the final piece.

What applications do you use? Photoshop mostly, but sometimes Illustrator. I’m also drawing an animated short in Flash right now, and for graphic design assignments I might use InDesign or QuarkXPress.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? My Cintiq drawing monitor. But I have a feeling all computer monitors will be touch-screen before too long.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? Command-Z—“Undo”! Don’t you wish we had that in our daily, walking-around lives?

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? My two current commercial clients are children’s educational publishers. One likes traditional work and the other likes digital work.

My two personal projects are an animated cartoon to go with a children’s song I wrote, and an e-book illustrating a poem I loved as a child. The e-book will be ink and watercolor, and I’ll design the layout and cover as well since I’m also a graphic designer.

In the animation, the characters are drawn in Flash so that they may be animated easily, but the final backgrounds will be created in Photoshop. I recorded the music with ProTools. The Flash animation, Photoshop backgrounds, and music will be brought together in a program called AfterEffects, and then finally exported into a final movie format. I do not expect to do all of that by myself!

Julian Hector is a Brooklyn-based illustrator who grew up in the Austin area. His first book, The Little Matador, was written during his senior year at Parsons the New School for Design. Since then he has gone on to illustrate a string of picture books, including The Gentleman Bug, which he also wrote, Monday is One Day with Arthur A. Levine, and C.R.Mudgeon by Leslie Muir. And his creations are just as appealing in his recent highly digital style (just check out the header icons on his website) as they are in his pieces that use more traditional media. Check out what he has to say on using technology in his work.

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? I’d say about 30% and growing.  I’m starting to work with pure digital illustrations again, and I’ve always used basic photoshop tweaking for scanned artwork.

What applications do you use? The Adobe creative suite: Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, InDesign, and Dreamweaver.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? Command Z; ‘undo’ !!!!

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? The tweak-ability. Working digitally makes tweaking artwork very quick and easy.  With vector art, specifically (as opposed to pixel based art), I love how easily illustrations can be enlarged and shrunk for different uses, without having to worry about resolution.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I’m slowly working on a new picture book that will be completed digitally, titled The Tricycle Mouse.  In college I worked exclusively on the computer and missed using my hands.  To compensate, I let the pendulum swing too far in a hand-drawn direction, but now realize that I want both techniques/styles in my life, even if I risk looking unfocused with split personalities.  At the end of the day, it’s a ‘do what you love’ issue, and I love working both traditionally and digitally.

And for more on Julian Hector, check out his blog.

Stephen Savage has illustrated such acclaimed books as Polar Bear Night, a New York Times bestseller and ALA notable book; The Fathers Are Coming Home by Margaret Wise Brown; and most recently, Where’s Walrus?, which has received starred reviews. For the New Yorkers out there, art from Where’s Walrus? is currently on view in The Original Art show at the Society of Illustrators (along with art by Girllustrator Patrice Barton from her new book Mine!). In 2008, Steve won a gold medal from the Society for a needlepoint illustration. He’s also worked in media such as blockprint, felt applique, digital and collage. His editorial illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic and the Wall Street Journal. Steve earned an MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts (attending one year with Girllustrator Shelley Jackson). He’s known for his unique economical style, conveying mood and emotion through a spare use of line and color. Hear what Steve has to say about his illustration process and technology below!

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? 90%. Put it this way, my laptop and Wacom tablet go everywhere with me.

What applications do you use? Photoshop and Illustrator CS 4 for most of my art. Right now I’m illustrating the sequel to POLAR BEAR NIGHT, using linocuts. Consider though that my previous 2 books were digital. Even on a linocut project, much of the sketch and prep work is done in Photoshop.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? Tool: Wacom tablet and stylus. Program: Photoshop. Photoshop is like a digital art studio.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? Portability and flexibility.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I am under contract for 3 books: POLAR BEAR MORNING (written by Lauren Thompson, WHERE’S WALRUS 2 (a wordless follow up to WHERE’S WALRUS), and THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE (by Stephen Krensky). The last 2 will be digital - Illustrator + Photoshop.

Christina Wald’s lovely illustrations are created either in acrylic or digitally, or a combination of both (the Thumbelina image below is digital!). She even works with vector images occasionally and designs toys, giftware, and other products. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from the University of Cincinnati. Christina paints fabulously realistic animals and has illustrated over ten books for children including Habitat Spy, Little Red Bat and a Penguin Young Readers version of Black Beauty. She was kind enough to take a break from her busy schedule to answer our Illustrators & Technology questions!

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? A lot actually. I scan in all my sketches and compile them in Photoshop. I also print out my sketches on to bristol board to paint over. Saves a LOT of time. I also paint my illustration in pieces and like the sketches, put them together in Photoshop. I still use pencil and acrylic though. I guess I am old fashioned in that way.

What applications do you use? Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Acrobat mostly and a little Painter.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? My Cintiq. I am about to get an ipad, but am dubious about using it for art yet. It cannot use a pen like stylus.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? Being able to tweak colors and make changes.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I am working on several books (Including Warm Winter Tail for Sylvan Dell and Why the Possum has a Large Grin for Pelican) and some illustrations for toys. I incorporate the digital tech aspect in every level. I do a lot of illustrations in vector for the toy market.