The Who, What, When, Where and Whys of Getting an Agent

Summer is finally here in the UK and I’m admiring the sun from inside after just finishing final artwork for another picture book. At the end of creating a book I always become a bit of a hermit, wearing sweat pants all day, if not pajamas. Hygiene gets thrown out the window, showers are optional and eating comes in the form of snacks and scarfing down something at my office desk. But the work is done and I’m ready to finally go outside! Who knows, I might even get a tan.

Anywho, I wanted to write about a topic that keeps on popping into my life these days. Agents! I don’t know if it’s the summer air or if there’s a common thread in the combined consciousness of the children’s book industry, but SO MANY PEOPLE I know are querying and signing with agents right now! If you’re in the kidlit world, you know that’s a big achievement because the whole “agenting” process is not straightforward or easy.

When I first started getting interested in the children’s book industry, I had no idea what a literary agent was. I hadn’t heard about them in art school and the only time I had even heard the title was in relation to celebrities or to the FBI. And FBI agents, I found out, have nothing to do with making books.

I know that a large chunk of you lovely blog readers are illustrators who are working towards getting your first book deal. And getting into the industry sometimes feels like a daunting process especially when you’re at the point where you’re looking for an agent. So I’m writing this today to make the mysterious topic of agents a little less mysterious.

It can feel a little scary sending your precious portfolio into the big, wide world!

What is an agent/agency?

Okay, I KNOW I’m breaking protocol and starting with “what” instead of “who”, but I think it’s important that you should know what children’s book agents actually are. Here’s a definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:

A literary agent is “a professional agent who acts on behalf of an author in dealing with publishers and others involved in promoting the author's work.”

The children’s book world is made up of freelance authors and illustrators. Publishers hire us as contractors so, essentially, we have to make up a new contract for every project we work on. And if you want to make a career out of being a writer, illustrator, or both, you need to have a steady influx of book projects coming in to make a living salary. For author/illustrators you create books to sell to publishers in between doing illustration work for books already written. It’s a lot to handle yourself. Each publisher words their contracts, pays royalties and advances, states specific parameters for their books differently.

So agents are that in-between. They handle all of the contract work, the submission process, editing (although not always), scheduling, cheerleading, etc. My agent could be considered “superhuman” considering everything she juggles.

Let’s define “agent” even further:

• Literary Agent: A literary agent is, I’d say, the most common type of agent you’ll encounter working in the children’s book industry. They tend to work only on book deals (no magazine projects, children’s products, etc.) and they tend to either be children’s book agents or adult’s book agents, but it can differ from agent to agent and agency to agency. Literary agents tend to take 15% commission. So that’s 15% of your advance + any royalties.

• Art/Illustration Agent: A children’s illustration agent is someone who will represent you for book deals, magazines, children’s product design, and anything children’s illustration related. I’ve noticed that they tend to promote your work more than a literary agent might, like they’ll send out digital postcards or email campaigns. Art agents will represent illustrators and author/illustrators and I find that an increasing number are even representing authors. Art agents tend to have a higher commission starting at 20% but can go up to 30%.

When researching both literary and art/illustration agents you might hear the word “editorial” thrown around. An editorial agent is an agent that will edit your manuscript and dummy before submitting it to publishers. Other agents will let you do this on your own but might be involved in your portfolio curation. A good thing to remember is that agents, much like illustrators, are in a pretty flexible career. Each one is unique!

Who are the agents and agencies?

According to querytracker.com, there are hundreds of literary agencies and thousands of literary agents in the publishing industry. So where do you start searching?

Now that you know what an agent and agency is, let’s go over some of the top dogs in the literary agenting world. These are a few of the agencies I was interested in when I first started my journey that I thought could be a good starting place for ya’ll:

Literary Agencies:

1. Andrea Brown Literary Agency: This is where I’m represented! I might be a bit biased because I LOVE it here, but ABLA can stand on it’s own two legs. It is a children’s book agency only and represents notable authors and illustrators like Kate Messner, Raul the Third, and Meg Medina.

2. Writer’s House: Writer’s House is an agency that represents both adult work and children’s work. They represent top illustrators like Dan Santat, Jon Klassen, and Oge Mora.

3. Stimola Literary Studio: This is an adult and children’s book agency, so they do it all. They represent top authors and illustrators like Suzanne Collins, Anne Hunter, and Donna Barba Higuera.

4. Folio Jr.: I heard about Folio Jr. from a couple of my kidlit friends. Folio Jr. is the children’s book offshoot of their main agency, Folio Literary Management and represents big names like Sydney Smith, Erin and Philip C. Stead, and Megan and Jorge Lacera.

5. Root Literary: Root is a boutique agency. It doesn’t represent huge numbers of clients like Writer’s House does, but I’ve heard great things about it from fellow authors and illustrators. A boutique agency allows for a more focused environment. Root Literary represents adult and children’s work. There are only a handful of agents and they represent top authors and illustrators like Ellen T. Crenshaw, Joy Hwang Ruiz, and Colleen AF Venable.

Art/Illustration Agencies:

1. The Cat Agency: Previously, I would have listed The Cat Agency as “boutique”, but they have grown exponentially in the past couple years. They have multiple agents and represent children’s book illustrators along with a handful of authors. Their notable clients are Niña Mata, Rahele Jomepour Bell, Nathan Hale, and Jamie Green, but they also represent a whole range of illustrators that inspire me.

2. Bright Agency (UK based): I would consider this agency to be very large and one of the biggest children’s illustration agencies in the world. They represent clients in greeting gifts, design advertising, animation, literary, licensing and children’s illustration industries. I was surprised that they represent a handful of writers as well. Their notable clients are Benji Davis, Chris Chatterton, Fiona Woodcock, and Tom Knight.

3. The Plum Agency (UK based): This illustration agency represents author/illustrators and illustrators in the children’s illustration market. They specialize in children’s illustration and media. I couldn’t find more information on exactly what “media” means but I assume TV deals are happening! Some of their notable clients are Paula Bowles, Kate Pankhurst, and Stef Murphy.

4. Tugeau 2 or also known as T2: This is a boutique agency that has an interesting link to The Cat Agency. Nicole, the founder of T2 is Christy Tugeau’s (founder of The Cat Agency) daughter-in-law! What a small world. T2 represents children’s book illustrators and a handful of authors. Some of their notable clients are Devon Holzwarth, Teagan White, and Lee White.

These are just a few out of the hundreds of agencies out there, but I’m hoping this is a solid starting ground. Make sure to do your own research about these organizations and see if they fit your needs. It can be a long process to get an agent, but doing lots of research is worth it in the end!

When should I start looking for an agent?

This is a hard question to answer and I believe it’s where a lot of illustrators struggle. It’s difficult determining when your portfolio is “agent ready”.

Portfolios, manuscripts, and dummies are living, breathing things and you can work on them forever. But at some point you need to make the leap and start sending out your work to agents!

If you’re an illustrator, take a look at your portfolio. Do you have a portfolio with 10 or more images in one style showing the kind of work you want to get, i.e. picture book illustration, middle grade illustration, graphic novels, etc? If so, then I would start making an agent list. If not, try building your portfolio up a bit more.

Shameless plug here, if you’re not sure what you need for a children’s illustration portfolio, check out my Domestika class on creating an Online Children’s Illustration Portfolio.

But also be kind to yourself. I didn’t think I was ready for an agent when I received offers of representation. It really took me by surprise! You can test out your portfolio readiness with critique groups, paid critiques from industry professionals, and fellow illustrators. Even try reaching out to illustrators that are agented by your dream agent and ask for their opinion.

They might be busy and not able to respond, but in my experience people kindly share their knowledge. People are really nice in this industry! They’ll help you determine whether you’re ready or not.

What it sometimes felt like for me when I was querying agents. Better finished than perfect though!

Where do I send in my queries? (+How do I prepare??)

First things first, what is a query letter?? If you haven’t heard this word being thrown around, “querying” is the term used when you start the process of reaching out to agents for representation. A query letter is a kidlit resumé and cover letter rolled into one. It’s usually sent as an email and it’s how you introduce yourself and your work to an agent.

Now that you’ve determined which agents you want to query and what you want to send, where do you send this magical query letter?

Each agency has different guidelines for sending in your query letter, portfolio, and dummy. This may even differ from agent to agent within an agency. Like everything else when it comes to querying, take your time, do your research, and organize your process. You’ll be sending out your portfolio in no time! I’ve outlined all the submission pages for the previously listed agencies below.

1. Andrea Brown Literary Agency: https://www.andreabrownlit.com/submissions (You’ll need to go to each agent’s contact page and click on the teal-green text to fill out a query manager form.)

2. Writer’s House: https://www.writershouse.com/submissions

3. Stimola Literary Studio: https://www.stimolaliterarystudio.com/submissions

4. Root Literary: https://www.rootliterary.com/submissions/

5. Folio Jr.: https://www.foliojr.com/emily-van-beek (The submission requirements are located on the individual agent pages.)

6. The Cat Agency: https://catagencyinc.com/contact-us

7. Bright Agency (UK based): https://thebrightagency.com/uk/submissions/new?division=childrens-illustration

8. The Plum Agency (UK based): https://theplumagency.com/submission

9. Tugeau 2 or also known as T2: https://tugeau2.com/contact

How to prepare to query?

• Draft your query letter! Now I’m not a query letter expert so I’m going to add some links here that better explain how to format a query letter better than I could. Feel free to use the example below of a letter that I wrote when I was querying agents in 2020 as a jumping off point! This is a query letter to The Cat Agency’s Christy Ewers that got me an email reply and a call. I find that seeing a real life example can help more than reading a list of tips and tricks. I’m a visual learner and I bet my butt that you are too :)
  

  • The 10 Dos and Don’ts of Writing a Query Letter, Writer’s Digest

  • How to Write a Query Letter, Queryletter.com

  • A Sample Literary Agent Query Letter with Hints and Tips, Jericho Writers

“Hello Christy,

I attended your Portfolios and Promotion webinar on March 12th and was enthralled. I’ve been keeping an eye on the CAT Agency for the majority of my illustration career and was ecstatic to see that you were accepting submissions from those who attended. As a previous Bostonian, I was also excited to hear someone use “wicked” in a sentence again!

I am a Latinx author/illustrator based out of Houston, Texas, where the weather is hot but the tacos are even hotter. Since focusing on my illustration career I’ve received several accolades: Top Portfolio Award at the 2019 Houston SCBWI Conference, winner of the Society of Visual Storytelling’s November 2019 Illustration Contest, and two-time winner of SCBWI’s Draw This Challenge published in SCBWI’s monthly Insight newsletter (Dec. 2018/Dec. 2019). I also illustrated PAPITO AND THE SQUEEZEBOX, a music-based Tejano picture book, for Puro Party Publishing released March 2020.

After graduating with a BFA in Animation from MassArt, I had a short but sweet career as a preschool teacher. Currently, I work as a graphic designer at a marketing agency and believe my combined experiences and colorful illustration style create a strong foundation for the children’s illustration market.

In addition to my portfolio, I’d like to share my 376-word picture book, HEDGEHOGS DON’T WEAR UNDERWEAR, about a tighty-whitey wearing hedgehog who questions whether he is brave enough to break through society’s elastic bands.

I've included five illustrations for your review and my online portfolio and picture book dummy can be seen at www.marissavaldez.com. If interested, the password to get into the dummy is: Undies1

Thank you for your time and consideration!

Safe and Healthy Wishes,

Marissa Valdez”

• If you’re planning on pitching yourself as an author-illustrator, keep a growing list of your book ideas. You don’t want to forget a potential best selling idea if an agent asks to hear your ideas!

• If you’re already working on a picture book dummy, polish it off. Don’t worry about making it so perfect that it could be published. Rough sketches and a couple final pieces are enough to send in a query because showing an agent that you’re a prolific creator is better than making one perfect book.

• Create a list of who you’d like to query. You can start by using the list from earlier in this blog or start researching on your own. Think clearly about what kind of agent you’re looking for while you do your research.
  
  What kind of books do you want to work on? Which agents represent those genres? Do you want an agent that’ll represent you in art deals along with literary deals? Take some time to write down all your qualifiers and organize your agent list.

A screenshot of my Google Sheets agent organizer from 2020.

• Organization is key when you’re querying! You might have to reach out to five agents before you get an offer, but you may also have to reach out to 100 or even more. It’s a different process for every person. So if you’re querying over months or even years, you’d want to make sure that you remember who you queried, when you queried them, what you sent them, and what their response was.
  
  Here are a couple of links to videos that can help start your query organization process:

1. Creating Your Querying Spreadsheet, Book Ends Literary Agency

2. How to Use QueryTracker to Organize Your Agent Search, Storyteller Academy

Why do I want an agent?

Okay, so now you know the basic who, what, when, where and hows. But the biggest question is, why do you even need an agent? Why do you want one?

I like to approach this answer from the perspective of a small business owner, because freelance authors and illustrators ARE running businesses. And when you have a small business, it’s important to delegate tasks that someone else can do BETTER than you. You would hire an accountant to handle complex tax situations, right?

So why would you not take on an agent to help you through complex publishing situations as well? This means that you can focus on the things you excel at instead of stretching yourself so thin that you rip.

P.S. A lot of major publishers won’t accept manuscript or book dummy submissions without an agent. I would say that most authors and illustrators working with major publishers right now are represented by an agent, so they’re a major component of the publishing industry.

In my situation, getting representation from my agent changed my career path for the better. But having an agent isn’t always necessary. If you’re planning to only work on self-published books, or if you already have intimate knowledge of the publishing industry, I wouldn’t get an agent. If you’re thinking about only doing children’s products and not books, you might not need an agent as well.

While I’m very pro-agent for the rest of us, being a client of an agent does not necessarily mean that the relationship will work out. I would say about 40% of the authors and illustrators I know have had to leave their agent and find a new one. That’s a scary thought, but it shouldn’t keep you away from the querying process because those 40% also found an agent that they now love!

So once again, I would do research, make a list of your priorities, and see if having an agent is the right choice for you. And remember, this is all a learning process. For better or for worse, being a children’s book author and illustrator is an incredibly flexible career path. Whatever decision you make isn’t permanent! We’re all just learning as we go 💛

Some last advice:

• Agents are not publishers. They look at you as potential, not as a finished product. A relationship with an agent is going to grow over time and as long as there is equal give-and-take, the relationship should flourish.

• Participate in online contests like #DVPit and mentorships to gauge how much interest you’re getting in your work.

• I felt completely unready when I started looking for agents. I participated in #DVPit and thought that I would get little to no interest. To my surprise, I got interest from many different agents, several of those from major agencies, with multiple offers!
  
  All that to say that if I didn’t participate in that contest, I would have waited another six months to year to query agents. We creatives can be our own harshest critics but sometimes we need to push past that fear and take the leap into the unknown. So get to it!
  

Here are a few extra resources to help you along your journey!

Blog Posts:

https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk/blog/how-to-query-a-literary-agent

https://brookevitale.com/blog/how-to-find-a-childrens-book-agent

https://taralazar.com/category/queries/

https://debbieohi.com/2023/03/redfoxliterary-loristeel-christopherthornock

Youtube Videos:

http://www.anooshasyed.com/blog/2020/11/15/how-do-i-get-an-agent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpQxUclWxZc&ab_channel=BookEndsLiteraryAgency

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7IM1f-VqZk&ab_channel=TheIllustrator%27sGuide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLDgMf05YFo&ab_channel=GoodStoryCompany

Podcasts:

https://www.svslearn.com/3pointperspectiveblog/3pp130

https://www.jenniferlaughran.com/literaticast

Mentorship:

https://www.pbrisingstars.com/

A hot day holding some hot new books! But seriously, I was sweating here…

Hugs,
Marissa

---

Did you know that I send out book news, inspirations, and book club recommendations through a monthly newsletter? Sign up below so you don’t miss out ✍️

Pros and Cons of a Painting Experiment

Well hello there, friends. I can’t believe it’s already May. How did it get to be five months into the year? I’m chugging along and looking 2024 straight in the face now. It’s sneaking up on me but I’m going to be ready for it! Hope your year is going at the perfect pace.

View fullsize

Gouache, watercolor, and colored pencil respectively. @marissaarts

I thought I would write about something lighthearted, tangible, and full of fun this month! So I’m talking about the pros and cons of working with three different traditional mediums: gouache, watercolor, and colored pencils.

But secretly, this blog post is a bit of an excuse for me to bust out my paints and draw cute cats! While I love getting messy with my paints, I don’t always have the time for it. I sometimes worry that the things that I enjoy doing will fade away unless I actively make the time to do them. I wanted to create an intersection of a blog post that I hope ya’ll enjoy while experimenting and having fun painting. I hope I’ve achieved that!

P.S. This is not a tutorial post, these are just my thoughts on a fun exercise. And truly I’d love it if this blog became a conversation. What traditional medium do you enjoy using the most? Are there any that are your less-than-favorites? Are you a digital artist that is trying to paint more traditionally? Like moi…

I’d love to hear what you think! Send me an email or comment in this blog post below. Alright, onto the reviews!

---

View fullsize

Initial cat space sketch on Bristol board. @marissaarts

View fullsize

The finished gouache painting. Pencil for scale :) @marissaarts

Okay, 1st up is Gouache.

My Materials:

M. Graham and Co. Gouache, Holbein Acryla Gouache, and Bristol Board

Pros: 

• I love how opaque gouache is. If I make a mistake, I’m still able to fix that mistake fairly easily without muddying up the painting. It’s a wonderful mix between the opaqueness of acrylic paint and the transparency of watercolor.

• The colors are SO saturated! Sometimes when I work digitally, I can get stuck trying to figure out what my color palette should be, there can be too many options! With my gouache sets, I find that I can get a nice saturated palette from just a few paint tubes. And nothing is too neon like it can be if I work digitally. Neon yellow can work sometimes but I know I’ve overdone it in Procreate before…

• It’s nice for painting in a more graphic style. You can lay down flat colors really quickly while also adding dry and wet textures.

Cons: 

• Not a lot of cons really! 

• It takes some getting used to. When I first started using gouache, I was using it only like watercolor and nothing seemed to come out like I wanted. Once I practiced with it more, I found my sweet spot between using the paint thickly in some parts and more watery in others.

• The paint can start to build up if you’re repainting one spot over and over again. So be careful not to build up layers too thick, especially in trouble areas that you might be trying to get juuust right.

• It can sometimes be difficult to gauge how a color will look on your canvas. Keep a test paper nearby so you don’t unintentionally start slathering on a shade of blue that is waaayyy too dark or a pink that ends up looking more like a red. You can dab a little paint on the test paper to make sure that it’s the color you’re actually looking for.

View fullsize

My final gouache version. @marissaarts

How do I think the painting turned out?

I’m a big gouache fan, sooooo I might have gone into this exercise with a bit of a bias. But I love how it turned out! Some of the line work is messier than I wanted, but I still like there are rough edges and splotchy textures throughout. The colors came out wonderfully saturated as well, which was exactly what I was hoping for.

Tips:

• Work with a basic palette, don’t bother with buying a ton of different gouache paint tubes. I love working with red, yellow, blue, and white and that’s pretty much it! You can mix whatever color you need from there.

• Gouache allows you to add some lovely dry textures into your illustration. Don’t be afraid to try a dry brush technique to give your painting a stippling effect. 

• I like using more of a squared brush head with gouache because it allows you to get really nice crisp edges with the slightly gooey paint. I find that if I use rounded brush tips (especially the larger sizes) the paint can get clogged up on my brush and refuse to go onto the paper easily. 

---

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Watercolor is next! #2

My Materials: 

Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors and Bristol Board

Pros: 

• Painting with watercolor can be very calming. Adding one layer at a time and waiting for it to dry teaches me some much needed patience and gives me time to reflect on what I’m actually painting. I like that adding layers and layers of blue in the background of this piece made the galaxy behind the cat look really textured and full of space! (Although I will still pull out the hair dryer for a quick dry every once in a while…)

• This painting has more form than the other two because I was able to add transparent shadow layers around the cat’s helmet and on the mouse’s alien spaceship. While it’s not impossible to create shadow with other mediums I find that it comes more naturally with watercolor.

• Oh, that texture! The background came out looking really nice, especially in the corners, where I was able to let the water and color run a bit. The droplet textures really make your eye circle around the whole piece a few times. And it gave it a dreaminess that I feel like the gouache didn’t have.

Cons: 

• Patience! Or my lack of when it comes to painting with watercolor. This is a pro AND a con, I guess! I tend to run out of patience and not wait long enough to let my watercolor dry. Then I either smear my paint or I leave a section under colored. 

• I didn’t use masking liquid for this painting but I wish I did. It was difficult navigating around all the little stars and planets in the background even with a small brush. The constellations are a bit hidden because of that.

• The color didn’t come out exactly like I wanted. I kept on trying to add more purple to the background but each time I mixed purple, it came out too muddy and just ended up looking like dark blue. This made me think of when I use purple in a Procreate painting in the CMYK space. My digital pieces tend to print out more blue/dark than purple. Hmm! A coincidence??

View fullsize

My final watercolor version. Couldn’t resist a paint splatter here and there. @marissaarts

How do I think the painting turned out?

I really like the texture that the watercolor created but I’m not super happy with the blue background. It came out more green-blue than I was looking for. This makes me want to try and paint it again to see if I can fix that. I enjoy the soft edges around the character though. It reminded me of a more classic children’s book illustration.

Tips: 

• Don’t overwork your layers. There are parts of this painting where I layered on too many colors and they ended up muddy. It’s my biggest pain with working with watercolor BUT there are sections where I didn’t overwork it and it looks AMAZING! I want to work with watercolor more because it’s a real exercise in using as few paint strokes as possible to get your point across. 

• Stay simple with your colors. This is more of a life tip than just a painting tip. The more I fill up my palette with different paint colors, the more I make a painting that looks too busy.

• Invest in some masking liquid in case you want to keep really crisp lines around your white space. If you don’t use masking liquid, you might have more flowy/wavy edges, but that’s a great look too! Try out both methods and see what works for you.

---

View fullsize

Last but not least, Colored Pencils is #3.

My Materials:

Derwent Inktense Watercolor Pencils (technically watercolor pencils but I like to use them as colored pencils) and Bristol Board

Pros:

• The coloring process. I LOVE sitting down with my colored pencils and just coloring away at a blank sheet of paper. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to pull out a stack of coloring books and just go to town. It might sound like a strange pro, but it’s one that matters to me. I think it’s important to like what you’re doing to continue doing it!

• Texture!! Much like using watercolor, you get SOOO much texture from using colored pencils especially on rough toothed paper like this Bristol board. I love all the tiny white specks popping through the color. It almost makes the piece look like it’s covered in bits of starlight. 10/10 advantage for colored pencils for me!

• Color blending is really easy with good quality colored pencils and makes for some great gradients. That’s pretty evident on the space cat’s face below.

Cons:

• When you make a mistake, you MAKE a mistake. There’s no going back from accidentally drawing a line where you don’t want it. I attempted to use an eraser in a few spots that I wasn’t happy with but it didn’t make much of a difference. If there’s a way to completely erase a colored pencil line, please let me know!

• Loss of detail at a smaller size. These pieces are about 6 inches x 6 inches, so not super huge. If the illustration started at a large size I could’ve drawn in more detail, especially in areas around the cat’s face and inside the mouse’s spaceship. A learning experience!

• Smudging. Oh, the smudging. Some of the sections of this drawing definitely have smudging problems. With my palm, I kept on smearing blue dust from the background into the yellow of the stars and it really muddied up their color. I’m wondering if masking fluid could be used with colored pencil as well to keep smearing from being too much of an issue? An experiment for another time I guess :)

View fullsize

My final colored pencil version. You can still see faint pencil lines here too. @marissaarts

How do I think the painting turned out?

Like with the other two, I’m AGAIN really happy with how it turned out! I love, love, LOVE the texture of the colored pencil and I like how the shapes had to be a little more defined (especially with the star trails) because I wanted those areas to look really bright. The cat’s face came out way different from the other two pieces which I didn’t mean to do but just kind of happened while I was coloring. It was a nice surprise! Overall a great experience but I might try to recreate this image at a larger size to see if I can add in more detail.

Tips:

• Put on a good podcast or audiobook while you’re finishing a piece with colored pencil. I found that it was a fairly slow process compared to the watercolor and gouache painting times. You might find that it’s meditative like for me though!

• Keep a pencil sharpener close at hand. I think I was sharpening my pencils every minute or so to keep the lines crisp, especially in the more detailed areas.

• Plan out where you want white space before drawing. Like watercolor, you’re working from light to dark. It can be really easy to draw over a section that you later realize should’ve stayed white and then you have to paint over it or composite two pieces digitally to get that white space back.

---

A teeny process video.

When I first started writing this blog post I had the initial idea of filming myself painting all three versions of this space cat. I got half-way through the gouache painting and my phone completely ran out of space. Yarg!

So here I am now, with half a process video that I don’t really want to keep locked away in file exile forever. I haven’t edited it, I haven’t added music behind it, and I haven’t sped it up. I thought it might be fun to share a totally real representation of what it’s like when I paint. Hope you enjoy!

P.S. I have a bad case of hay fever/allergies at the moment so you can hear me sniffling, coughing, and sneezing throughout the video. This is NOT for anyone who enjoys ASMR… Sorry about that!

---

Those are my reviews! I had a lot of fun creating these pieces and sharing my thoughts with ya’ll.

I often get asked if publishers will hire illustrators that work traditionally. Or is working digitally the only way to get a job? Honestly, I believe the children’s book industry is leaning towards books that have some sort of traditional aspect to the illustrations, like hand painted textures or just painting the whole book traditionally. Christian Robinson, Brenden Wenzel and Vanessa Brantley-Newton are all illustrators who do just that and do it beautifully.

If you’re someone trying to get into the children’s book illustration industry, don’t stop yourself from using traditional mediums because of outside pressure. Create art that feels like you. And here’s my last, last tip:

Have fun! I’ve felt that pressure. The pressure to work only in the way that I’ve worked previously, but I’m here to say it’s okay to experiment. That’s how you grow.

Please try this exercise yourself, share your thoughts, and give yourself room to try out new things. I’m thinking that I might try this exercise again but with mediums I rarely EVER use. Hellooooo oil pastels!

Have a lovely May, friends. Talk to you more soon ❤️

Me trying to look deep in thought. Chica got the stare down better than me though…

Hugs,
Marissa

---

Did you know that I send out book news, inspirations, and book club recommendations through a monthly newsletter? Sign up below so you don’t miss out ✍️

Making the Book: A is for Ambitious

Back in October of 2020, I was asked if I wanted to illustrate a book called AMBITIOUS GIRL, written by Meena Harris and published by Little Brown Books for Young Readers. It was my first publishing gig and if you haven’t heard me say it already, this book changed my life.

It’s a picture book that pushes against the phrase, “too ambitious.” I try to still tell myself, “there’s no such thing as TOO ambitious!” Because I dream up big plans for my art and my business and my books and for how much ice cream I can eat in one sitting.

Fast forward two years into the future and here I am, seeing my second book with Meena and the whole Little Brown team out in the BIG WIDE world. A IS FOR AMBITIOUS had its book birthday on March 14th! Woot woot! A lot of blood, sweat, tears, ice cream, smiles, and Star Trek went into this and I can’t wait to share my book-making process ya’ll.

A little summary of A is for Ambitious, written by Meena Harris and published by Little Brown Books for Young Readers. 

The #1 bestselling team behind Ambitious Girl is back to take AG on a new adventure. A is for ambitious—and so much more in this fun and empowering picture book that reclaims words often used to undermine girls and women from A to Z. When they’re ready to take on the world, ambitious readers will have the vocabulary to do so. 

This book offers ambitious children everywhere inspiration as they pursue their goals and dreams. With a powerful message for us all, this is a perfect read aloud for showing children the power of words. 

When I was first given the manuscript for this book, I was SO excited. This story takes place in the Ambitious Girl “universe” but it’s an ABC book that redefines negative words, i.e. a dream project for me. Along with being a classic ABC book, this manuscript allowed me to be more abstract with the illustrations. But that freedom came with hesitation. What would I draw if I could draw anything??

Brainstorming and Research

In the first AMBITIOUS GIRL book, I made sure the illustrations complemented the manuscript while also adding a separate underlying story. That secondary story is that Ambitious Girl and her family attend an award ceremony in the park to announce who is the most ambitious girl of the year. It didn’t say to do that anywhere in the manuscript; it’s something I added to give the story an extra layer of interest.

Which is what I LOVE to do. I LOVE creating illustrations that weave a story that aren’t necessarily there in the text.

If you have a book that’s half text and half illustrations, why not add something extra to the artwork? It’s not always easy or possible to do, but when you can do it, OH, I think it takes the book to the next level. And with A IS FOR AMBITIOUS, I felt like that extra layer would make this book a lot of fun to read for both kids and parents. It includes confidence-boosting rhymes like:

H is for when I’m feeling Headstrong. I’m not afraid to speak up if something is wrong.

Cool! But I couldn’t think of how to string all the images in this book together to make a cohesive underlying narrative. Soooooo… I just started researching. And researching. And researching some more. Luckily, I really enjoy this part of the process.

I went to my usual hangout for researching, Pinterest, and started making boards to figure out basic color, style and general feeling for the art. I looked at lots of ABC books, both old and new. I looked up lots of ambitious girls and women and eventually an idea came to me. Maybe each letter in this book could illustrate a profession/passion that relates back to the text? Eureka!

Using fun professions in a book wasn’t a super new idea to me though. When I do AMBITIOUS GIRL virtual school visits, I usually ask the kids I’m presenting to what they want to be when they grow up. I think it’s fun because they usually have HUGE ambitions. Astronaut, paleontologist, doggie daycare owner!

I even met one girl who had the astronomical aspiration of becoming a bird. I bet it would be a lot of work, but at least she was ambitious!

I think it’s important to teach kids at a young age to be ambitious because those big aspirations tend to peter out as they get older. But we should stay ambitious even if that means instead of being a paleontologist, you become a researcher. Instead of an astronaut, you work at SpaceX BUILDING the rockets! Heck that bird girl could definitely become a pilot! Anyway, it’s a topic that’s obviously close to my heart and so I felt like kids and parents reading the book would relate to the idea as well.

Once I figured out which careers I wanted to include in the book, I then started collecting reference photos. There’s no main character throughout, which means there’s a different set of girls on each page/each spread, which was a LOT of different faces, outfits, and styles to draw.

So I amassed 183 photos (I checked!) from Google and Getty images.

This took a long time but it was so worth it! Getty images is one of my #1 places to find reference photos because they have an enormous stock photo library to choose from. (They are just for basic reference though, so if you’re using them, know that you can’t trace off the images or recreate them exactly without having to pay for them.)

But with those 183 photos, I felt ready to start sketching.

Character Designs

View fullsize

View fullsize

Okay, let’s get real: this book was created during an INSANE time in my life. I had just gotten married and I was about to move to the UK and I was turning everything upside down to get that all figured out.

So I didn’t have the time to focus on character designs as much as I wanted. That means most of the character sketches were done quickly and in Procreate. I think I may have done some designs with pencil and paper, but I assume those were lost in the move…

The character designs for this book weren’t as important as they had been for the first book anyway. In AMBITIOUS GIRL, we really needed to hammer down what Ambitious Girl was going to look like and it was important to make sure that her family was consistent from page to page. This book, eh, each page/spread was different, there was a new character/set of characters per scene outside of AG herself. I made the above really rough designs but mostly went with the flow deciding what kids would look like while sketching out the compositions. 

Although, the above character sketches ended up being almost exactly what I painted in the finals! How funny is that?

Thumbnails and Sketches

Onwards and upwards to the thumbnails! Another difference between the two AG books is that with this book:

1. I had more time to create it (I only had a month to illustrate, from start to finish, the entirety of AMBITIOUS GIRL). This time around I had more like 6 months.
2. I wanted to add more color. Like WAAAAAAYY more color.
3. And I wanted to experiment more with imagery. Go a little wild!

When my editor, Farrin, and I initially talked about what we envisioned for A IS FOR AMBITIOUS, she suggested having more of a vintage feel to the book to challenge the idea of what the “classic” ABC book looks like. Oooo, I loved that idea. A vintagy feel but with contemporary text sounded like a fun challenge. I’m also a huge Mary Blair and Richard Scarry fan so I relished the idea of making something similar to their work. I really liked their use of bright primary colors, bold shapes, and big monochrome backgrounds on spreads.

Super rough thumbnails for the book. I have to write down notes because I usually can’t tell what I’ve sketched out after a day.

While I had more time to work on the thumbnails, I found out quickly that it was going to be DIFFICULT.

I knew that I was going to be illustrating kids in professions and passions but it was difficult implementing those professions into real compositions. What made this even harder was that some spreads only had one letter on them, which meant lots of space to draw a scene. But others had three letters on them! The last thing I wanted to create was a cluttered book…

I spent a couple months just experimenting with the thumbnails to see what worked best. As you can see in the super, SUPER rough thumbnails above, I was trying to block out basic shapes on each spread and identify the foreground vs background. I also wanted a good mix of full spread, single page, and spot illustrations to keep the reader’s eye flowing through the story.

Side note: I know that children’s book illustrators are meant to draw lots of different kinds of compositions in a book, but hey, I like to go against the grain sometimes. My next goal is to make a book where there are only double page spreads! Okay, back to the topic at hand.

While it wasn’t easy drafting out the roughs for A IS FOR AMBITIOUS, it was a lot of fun. I like to think picture books are like puzzles (I had my wonderful editor on another book say the same thing to me once!). It takes so many tries to see what piece fits where. But it’s like glitter cannons and narwhal rockets go off when you place that last puzzle piece into its place because it’s just so dang satisfying getting it right!

A few more finalized sketches from A IS FOR AMBITIOUS. Some of these made it to finals, some did not and some got moved around! Lots of fun :)

So I worked on the thumbnails and sketches for a few months and turned them in either right before or right after I made my major move to the UK. I was pretty happy with how they were looking! And my editor and art director were pretty stoked with everything as well. It was a blessing from the book gods that things were going so smoothly!

Then I hit a teeny snag. When I first started thinking about the book as a whole, I had to think about trim size. Which meant, what size would the book be? The first Ambitious Girl book was 9 x 11 inches, but because this was a totally different topic, I was thinking this would look better as a square. I felt like having a square book rather than a rectangular one would lend itself to that “classic” ABC book look.

My initial sketches were all for a square book, 10 x 10 inches. I was really happy with how it was looking but then a little email slid into my inbox. My editor said NOPE, we had to keep the size of the book the same as the first for marketing purposes.

Bummer! I was annoyed that I had to change every spread, but in the end, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I felt sad that the book was literally changing shape, but I got over that quickly when I started sketching out pages on the new dimensions. I realized there were some compositions that weren’t totally working on the square pages and in the new rectangular format they had a lot more space to breathe.

I feel like 95% of being a children’s book illustrator is rolling with the changes, keeping an open mind, and embracing new ideas for your book. Taking a cookie and coffee break when things don’t always go your way helps too ☕️

Color Palette

Sketchy sketches from several spreads in A IS FOR AMBITIOUS. The sloth one was moved around a few times in the book.

The color palette for this book really helped me figure out how to form the compositions. When I was sketching, I kept the vintage primary color palette in mind. I knew that I wanted a lot of bright primary colors to mimic that Mary Blair kind of style.

Looking back, I’m really glad that I made a moodboard/pinterest board to help me make my decisions as I moved through the book. The color palette has come as more of an afterthought for other books I’ve worked on, but I think the way I work best is by incorporating color, even if it’s just basic colors, early on in the process. It’s something I’m going to try and do for my future projects. I think it’s crazy that it’s taken me years (my whole life really) to figure this part of my process out. I love my brain but I wish it would be a bit more efficient with its thinking sometimes…

Because I was working on the color palette at the same time as the sketches, I turned it all in at the same time to the publisher, which was nice! Everything off in one handy dandy email. When I got notes back, I’m pretty sure there were NO notes about the color which was fantastic too. The book was coming together!

Finals

After doing a couple round of revisions on a few pages and changing the trim size of the book, I was given the okay to start on the finals. This happened only a little while after I landed in the UK so I said hi to my husband and then just plopped myself into a chair, turned on Star Trek: The Next Generation (which is a surprisingly EXCELLENT show by the way), and went to town on finalizing everything.

While finals aren’t usually the most fun part of the process for me, there were several times in this book where I finished a spread and was really proud of what I created. Especially some of the spreads that challenged me! I am NOT the type of artist that enjoys drawing cars or trucks or construction equipment, but I decided that I would try to do that for the letter F. And not to toot my own horn but, TOOT TOOOOT. The vehicles came out exactly like I wanted them to and I even wanted to draw more vehicles for books in the future.

Imagine caterpillar Marissa emerging out of her artsy chrysalis to blossom into a butterfly that thinks construction equipment is not so bad and kind of cool, really.

A final spread from A IS FOR AMBITIOUS.

The finals were made almost entirely in Procreate, using a few handmade textures here and there for minor details. I used watercolor brushes, chalk brushes, and some splatters to get the final look. From Procreate, I took the art into Photoshop to do some basic compositing and color correction. And then that was it! I loaded all the files into my Dropbox and sent them over to my art director, Saho.

It’s always SO nerve-racking sending in the finals for a book, but I felt such relief afterwards. I’m pretty sure I sent those in and then took the longest nap of my life.

After turning in the finals and after doing some minor final revisions, I had the lovely wait for my proofs. I was working on a couple other books so my mind was occupied while I was waiting for the proofs, so it was a big surprise when they showed up on my doorstep! I really loved getting to see them because the color came out practically perfect. Previously I’ve had problems with other books looking washed out or being too dark but this one came out exactly how I envisioned.

I also really enjoyed the proofing process because it was the first time that I sat down with my editor and art director to discuss all the tiny details that we wanted to change from the printer for the final book. It was a lot of fun diving deep to make sure this book was going to be as beautiful as it possibly could be. 

And that’s it! On to the next book :)

It was a real eye-opener working on A IS FOR AMBITIOUS because I got to push my style and it paid off! There have been times in the past where that was not the case, but I enjoy going forward, trying new things and taking the good and bad as they come. Talking about the good, below are some of my favorite images from the book. My all-time favorite thing to draw was the veterinarian and her sleepily-happy sloth! I NEED to draw more sloths in the future…

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

This is the second blog in the “Making the Book” series and I hope you enjoyed it! There’s A TON to creating a book so I hope this overview provides at least a teeny insight into the mysterious process of illustrating a book. OOoooOOOo.

P.S. I tried to put in as much of my process in this blog post, but there’s so much that goes into it that I’ve also had to leave a lot out! If you have a question about something I didn’t talk about here, please let me know and I can answer your question via the newsletter OR maybe even in another blog post.

A IS FOR AMBITIOUS is out now ❤️ If you liked what you saw in this blog post, you can grab the book at your local independent bookstore, at your local library, or through Amazon.

My stash!

Hugs,
Marissa

---

Did you know that I send out book news, inspirations, and book club recommendations through a monthly newsletter? Sign up below so you don’t miss out ✍️

Unexpected Turns in My Kidlit Journey

Helloooo March! I’m late with the blog this month. I hate missing a deadline but it’s better than last month. Last month, there was no blog post!

Life happened. Our situation changed and I ended up making an unexpected move with my husband. We spent the majority of January and February packing, figuring out moving logistics and then unpacking, unpacking, and unpacking some more. It was a lot and that left little, to no, time to write.

Last month’s blog post was supposed to be about how to create unique characters for children’s books (let me know if that still sounds fun to read). I assumed that I would just continue writing on that topic into March. But then something struck me: a feeling that I needed to write about something more relevant to this year’s madness. To quote Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert:

“When an idea thinks it has found somebody -say, you- who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention.”

I often get the question: how can I become a full time illustrator? How can I get to a point where I can quit my day job?

I get messages from artists who are at a point in their children’s book journey where they feel confused about what to do next. So I’m here today, not to write about character designs but to write about all the unexpected twists and turns I had along the way to becoming a full-time children’s book illustrator. I’m hoping that my journey (a journey that never ends btw) can provide a little insight about where a children’s book illustrator’s path can lead.

A Troubled Start in Art School

Let’s start at the beginning. I had always loved drawing so when I was lucky enough to decide where to go to college, I made the decision to attend the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. It was an expensive decision to go to art school and I still have the student debt to prove it, but I loved it. The freedom to explore my creative practice as a young artist was worth it.

After my initial foundation year, I had to decide what art practice I wanted to focus on for the next three years. When I was in high school, I had briefly thought about children’s book illustration as a career but became enamored with illustration in general. So I felt sure that I would major in illustration in college. But I kept on hearing from friends, family and professors how as an illustrator, I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to live off. Talk about bad ear worms! My gut told me that illustration was the way to go, but I made the choice to major in Animation in the end. Animators work for studios that give them salaries which seemed like a safer financial choice overall. I’d mark this as the first time I didn’t listen to my gut as an adult and I paid the price. Because, ya’ll, animation was NOT. FOR. ME.

I was a bad animator and student. I didn’t attend classes like I should have, I didn’t put a huge amount of effort into my assignments and I truly ended up wasting a lot of time and money. It felt horrible at the time because I WANTED to be the perfect student, but I couldn’t force myself to spend time doing something that I had absolutely no MOTIVATION for.

A moment that I think back to was when I was on a class trip to an animation festival in Ottawa. I was asked who my animation influences were. Uhhh… no one? I didn’t have any! Looking back, I realize that I already had a major picture book influence, Jon Klassen, but I couldn’t care less about animators!

By the end of my university time, I had an appreciation for animation and animators (because MAN do animators work hard) but I didn’t have a job-ready animation reel or portfolio. All that being said, my animation skill-set helped me develop my children’s illustration portfolio in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated later on in life and I made lifelong friends at that school. It wasn’t all bad!

Some illustration work I made in college that I liked more than my animation reel 😂

My First Job

So there I was, a new artist out in the workforce, hoping to find a job that I was passionate about but that also paid a nice salary. The mythical unicorn of an art career. But that didn’t happen. After graduating from art school, I wasn’t making enough money as a pizza place cashier and a kid’s camp counselor to pay an expensive Boston rent. I boarded a plane along with my beloved cat, Baby, and we flew back to Texas to live with my older brother and his family. “I’ll be there for a few months, maybe a year at most.” I had thought to myself. I had high hopes…

For a little over a month, I was unemployed but applying everywhere. I applied to mainly retail jobs because while I had this degree, I didn’t feel like I was actually good enough to get a job. Like a lot of creatives, I tended to undervalue myself. I was about to accept a position at Bath and Body Works, but then I saw a job posting that caught my eye. Preschool Teaching Assistant? I had been working and volunteering with kids since I was in my early teens, so this felt like a good potential path. After a quick interview, I was in!

I worked for a small independently owned preschool in the outskirts of Houston, Texas and loved it. The kids were so funny and smart and I left work everyday feeling fulfilled. Out of the blue, I felt a spark: I was reading books to the kids everyday. I poured over the art with them, acted out the entirety of WE’RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT, and took notice of which books they liked best. It felt perfect.

Lack of Magic

But it wasn’t right. I still craved that art career I had dreamed of as a teen. Some other aspects of the job started to bother me too: I wanted to have more authority over my work (which eventually manifested into being my own boss) and honestly, I wasn’t making very much money. I was barely making enough to scrape by and I knew that I’d eventually need to be the breadwinner for my future family.

So while I was still at the preschool, I took a leap and started applying for graphic design and animation jobs in the area. I must have applied to at least 20 companies but got a callback to only three. Only one called me back to say that they wanted to hire me. So that’s where I went! 

Let me tell you, this was hard to do. I had SO many people telling me to just focus on getting a teaching certificate. It was the easier route they said! And while I think teaching is an amazing career, it’s not what I wanted to do quite yet and I remembered the last time I didn’t listen to my gut.

So there I went, to a national company in their graphic design department. For the first year or so, I felt amazing. I was working in the art industry and finally making enough money to start paying off my student debt. It was freeing.

I was working for a company that mainly made marketing material for car dealerships and I didn’t care about cars at all. I liked learning about graphic design but I had absolutely no motivation for the material I was creating. So once again, I got stuck in a rut. Except this rut stayed with me for the next 3 years.

What now?

Eventually I started feeling really broken down. I was working a full-time job but knew that I needed to get out. I just didn’t know how or where to go. Friends and family started encouraging me to do freelance design so I started exploring that world. Others told me to go into software development because I’d be able to make a lot more money. Sound familiar? But I couldn’t even force myself to start coding. There was NO joy in that for me. I tried lots of different things but nothing serious happened for a couple of years.

Then BOOM, one day I started listening to a children’s illustration podcast at work. Immediately I was hooked. The podcast, Three Point Perspective, was three industry professionals talking about the ins and outs of working as children’s book illustrators.

It literally blew my mind. These guys were talking about what I always wanted to do. They literally laid out a roadmap to becoming a children’s book illustrator and the feeling of “I NEED to do this” hit me so bad, that I couldn’t focus on anything else for a while after that. After some serious conversations with my partner about where this would lead, I decided to take the leap into the children’s book industry, working on that in the evenings and weekends while keeping my day job. 

SO! First thing I did was join the SCBWI, which I talk about a lot on this blog. What a life changing event. The first time I attended a meeting, I could feel that I found my community. SCBWI taught me everything I needed to know about the complicated world of children’s publishing. They’re pretty much the best.

From there, things were kind of a blur.

I was still trying to work on doing freelance graphic design as a side hustle. The odd illustration commission slid into my email every once in a while. I joined a critique group and started working on my children’s illustration portfolio and with fear in my heart, started posting my art on instagram. I even participated in Inktober! I told myself that if I could finish a 31 day art challenge then I was SERIOUS about illustration being my new life.

Pulled in Different Directions

The thing is, I wasn’t putting 100% of myself into children’s illustration. I still had those same voices in the back of my head whispering, “How are you going to make a living? How are you ever going to pay off your student loans? How will you support the family that you want to have in the future?” My gut said this was the right path, but everything else said to find a safe way out.

Reluctantly, I started applying to graphic design jobs that were more in line with the industry that I wanted to be in. A good compromise, right? So I applied to a children’s toy manufacturing company. I got a few steps into the hiring process but eventually I got a hard no. I think that was the universe giving me a hint that this wasn’t the right road for me, but like many other times, I ignored that nudge.

A little while after, a friend told me that Highlights was hiring in their graphic design department and it felt like a light in the dark. Working at a children’s magazine with a steady salary? An actual miracle!

Quick note: I had a HORRIBLE graphic design portfolio at this point. The company I was working for had a clause in their contract stating that their employees couldn’t share any work created there publicly, so my portfolio was just a few graphic design bits and bobs that I had cobbled together over the years. It was paltry at best, but I decided to apply to the Highlights job anyway.

My Big Break, or So I Thought…

Because of my lack of credentials, I decided I needed to do something big to get Highlight’s attention. I created and illustrated a cover letter that mimicked the classic highlights magazine and oh boy, did it get their attention. A day after sending in my cover letter, I got a call back. They loved it! And they wanted to see more.

Funny story: At one point, I was asked if I actually created the cover letter I submitted. And I can’t blame them for wondering! I think they could see the effort I put into my illustration work but they couldn’t see the same thing in my graphic design work.

Happily though, I received several calls back from the hiring manager. After completing a few graphic design tests for the company, I felt sure that I was getting the job. I started telling my family and friends that I was moving to Pennsylvania to work at this amazingly cool children’s magazine company. But then I got the call that I was dreading. Highlights decided to go in a different direction.

And with this rejection, I was absolutely crushed.

I was spending 60+ hours a week working my day job, freelance jobs, and applying to jobs. Nothing that I was doing seemed to be working. The universe obviously had different plans for me.

Enjoying the Journey

In the end, it was meant to be.

Losing the job opportunity at Highlights was so devastating that it made me rethink my intended career path. I had a long talk with my partner about what to do next and what I really wanted to focus on. What were my priorities?

While I was working to get hired at Highlights, I had submitted my portfolio to my local SCBWI conference and won the portfolio award. So things were moving along, but I realized that I was stretching myself too thin. Even though it felt wrong and like I was throwing away a huge potential income stream, I stopped working on graphic design completely and focused only on my kidlit portfolio. I was still at the day-job, but outside of those eight hours, I honed in on making my own picture book dummies. 

Taking A Leap of Faith

What a huge change! I felt happier because my brain wasn’t stretching itself in 20 different directions. I still had those voices telling me this was a bad idea but shooed them away and embraced the fact that I was on this path and only this path. I was now going to do everything in my power to become a children’s book illustrator. And those voices were a lot quieter than my gut who kept on saying, “Go, go, go!”

I attended every SCBWI meeting I could and started reaching out to illustrators I admired to gleam any bit of knowledge from them. I started receiving small local freelance jobs for children’s illustration more often and I took any opportunity I could find to showcase my portfolio.

Soon after I made this decision, a friend (the same friend who told me about Highlights, yay for kidlit friends!!) told me about a twitter pitch contest called #dvpit that she thought I should participate in. It was for diverse authors and illustrators to showcase their story pitches and portfolios to agents and editors on twitter. Because of my hispanic background, I decided to join in.

Like previous times in my life, it felt like my portfolio wasn’t good enough to get me into the industry, but darned if I cared because I KNEW this was the life I needed to live.

I’m convinced that being successful in the children’s book industry is 10% sweat, 20% luck, 2% skill, and 110% pure determination/risk-taking. Because when I put my work on twitter, it started getting attention. Around a dozen literary/art agents liked my post which indicated they were interested in representing me. I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT.

I was convinced that my portfolio was bad, but the universe proved me wrong.

I had about three agents that I ended up seriously talking to. It was an actual dream come true! In the end, I went with my amazing agent, Kelly Sonnack, and we started formulating my next moves to get illustration work. She was helping me create my own career map.

Where I Am Now

A lot happened in between getting an agent and now:

• I had signed on with Kelly with a rough picture book dummy I was working on and she was able to sell that within the year.

• I put my portfolio in a Los Angeles SCBWI showcase and won an honour which got the attention of a few editors at major publishers. Another win for taking risks!

• I left my day job after getting my first round of book deals.

• I have three children’s books out in the world, two of which got the #1 slot on NY Times Bestseller list and the third recently winning a Golden Kite Award Honor.

• I’m working on a few more picture books for publishers and have spent time developing my own picture books and a potential graphic novel.

• I’ve done freelance illustration work for Highlights! They were great to work with and I’m a lot happier being on the illustration side of things :)

These are only a few things that have happened in the past two years. They are really great, wonderful things, but I still have to focus on what my gut is telling me to do on a daily basis. Sometimes, I make the wrong decision. Or I don’t want to take a risk! Geez, sometimes I just want to fall on my couch, cozy up with a Netflix show and eat cookies. But I keep on going and remember the journey that brought me to where I am today. And I remember how this path finally feels right.

4 Big Takeaways from My Journey

Here are some takeaways from my weird and winding road to children’s illustration that I hope can help you:

1. Take risks: Network in your local community, put your portfolio in a showcase, send out postcards to art directors and editors and/or start a social media account!

2. Name your influences: If you find that you don’t have any children’s book influences, maybe rethink your priorities. 

3. TRUST. YOUR. GUT.

4. Remember that each person’s journey is going to be different: I don’t have kids or a big family to think about yet, but lots of people do! You might live in a country where accessing community groups is harder. Whatever the situation, do what is best for you.

I hope what I’ve shared with you has been helpful, hopeful, or at the very least, entertaining. Good luck along the way, and don’t forget that you can always reach out to me to share your own experiences. I’d love to hear them ❤️

I’m in a new office now and I wanted to share a cute photo of my setup but instead, I have this! A messy but realistic studio :)

Hugs,
Marissa

---

Did you know that I send out book news, my inspirations, and book club recommendations through a monthly newsletter? Sign up below so you don’t miss out ✍️

Brainstorm, Art-storm, Storystorm!

IT’S 2023. Hip, hip hurray to another new year!!

We’re in the future now, right? Flying cars and teleportation are going to be mainstream aannnyyy day now. 

But while I wait for a half-flying-car, half-time-traveling-machine, I’ve been thinking about my 2023 New Year’s resolution. Usually I choose a word or phrase to help me define my upcoming year. Last year’s phrase was leap of faith and, let me tell you, it was the perfect phrase to choose.

I got married, moved to another country, and flung headfirst into writing a graphic novel. So I think having that initial word at the beginning of the year was great guidance when I had my “what am I doing again?” moments throughout 2022.

Last year was a whirlwind of jumping into the unknown, but this year the word balance keeps coming to my mind. Balance between work and personal life that maybe wasn’t there in 2022. Balance between health and hobbies. Even focusing more on bank balances balance would be great.

So I’m leaning towards 2023 being the year of balance. 

I used to participate in online art challenges like Inktober and MerMay which required balance between time, art and creativity. After I started working as a children’s book illustrator full-time, I found it hard to keep up with the challenges. At the end of a long day illustrating, I would lose my drive to draw. But I always loved the satisfaction of having 31 illustrations I could stack up at the end of the month. I could point to those and go, “look at what I’ve accomplished”.

So that’s why today, while I may not have time to do illustration challenges, I still participate in Storystorm. It’s an easily attainable children’s-literature-based monthly challenge where you get a whole heck of a lot at the end of it. A whole stack of teeming children’s book ideas that you can point to and say, “look at what I’ve accomplished”, and “look at what I’m going to write”!

Made with watercolor pencils and procreate.

What is Storystorm?

“The Storystorm challenge is to create 30 story ideas in 30 days. You don’t have to write a manuscript (but you can if the mood strikes). You don’t need potential best-seller ideas.” Creator of Storystorm, Tara Lazar

Tara Lazar created Storystorm to encourage people to create 30 picture book story ideas in 30 days. She’s an awesome writer who’s published many hilarious picture books so I’m going to encourage you to head on over to her Storystorm website to read why she created this challenge. Unlike a lot of social media challenges, this one is really easy to participate in no matter what your schedule. You only need to jot down one idea per day. If you miss a day, well it’s easy to fudge that too, and I won’t tell anyone.

If you’re someone who craves accountability (can I get a “whoop whoop”) Storystorm has a wonderful online community. There a facebook group, Tara’s twitter plus the #storystorm hashtag, and the storystorm blog.

Also! Ding ding ding!! Tara’s offering up prizes for each day of the month for participating in the event, including feedback from agents and editors and critiques from authors and editors. That’s a big ol’ deal!

Okay, I’m really trying to sell Storystorm to you (I promise I’m not sponsored) but that’s because I’m so excited that this is available for people who are trying to get into the industry. Let’s be real, children’s book publishing is a HARD industry to break into, often with lots of near misses, so to have the opportunity to enter into an industry professional’s radar is a fantastic thing to offer.

In past years, I missed that there were prizes and I regret not taking the opportunity to sign up. So don’t miss out like I did! Sign up with this link here. Registration is still up for the next few days on Tara’s blog.

Made with watercolor pencils and procreate.

Why participate?

Okay, to the nitty gritty. As an author/illustrator, I usually have several ideas churning in my head for books to write and illustrate. But the pressure for authors and illustrators to create unique, funny, heartwarming, profitable books can sometimes hinder creative brainstorming.

What makes a bestseller? A snake that likes dancing? A dinosaur that loves cooking? Or a cow that uses a typewriter? Pretty sure that one’s been done…

Brainstorming ideas over a month takes the pressure away. You don’t have to create the perfect idea. You’re just throwing bits of brain matter onto a wall and hoping that it sticks. Out of 30 ideas, you might have five that actually get written and only one that will get passed on to an agent or editor. But that’s one book that will go out into the world! And that’s a huge accomplishment in my opinion.

When I entered the kidlit sphere a couple years ago, I heard about Storystorm from my writing critique partners. I was attempting to write books seriously for the first time and was having a hard time creating manuscripts that were interesting to read.

After participating in Storystorm and seeing how my fellow writing partners came up with their ideas, I realized I wasn’t spending enough time in the all-important brainstorming phase of writing. Which surprised me, because as an artist I was taught to flesh out my art in thumbnails before finalizing the art.

Some character thumbnails I made for a sea monkey kid!

Thumbnails are made in the sketching/idea phase of making a piece, whether it be a book dummy, cover, food label, surface pattern, etc. You’re taught to create thumbnails, (a sketch usually the size of a thumbnail although mine tend to be the size of a Ritz cracker) to help pull the meaty, interesting ideas out from the back of your brain. Because the sketches are so small, they lack detail. And because they lack detail, they’re raw and ready to mold into something delicious.

I’ve found that you tend to draw the obvious ideas out first. The first few sketches may be compositions or characters that you already had in your head. By thumbnail #25 though, you’ve come to an idea that you had no idea existed inside of your brain. Sometimes those later ideas are the best, sometimes the first were perfect from the start, no matter what, you’ve worked those muscles inside your brain to create something unique.

My Ideas for Today

To help get you started, I’m going to share three picture book ideas I wrote down for today:

• A squirrel that’s having a hard time choosing what to put in his sandwich.

• A crab that needs her own space. 

• Space camp (in space.)

And that’s about it! I am going to write down three ideas daily for the next thirty days. By the end of the month, I’ll have 90 ideas! And as a plus, I often look back at my Storystorm-idea-list for inspiration throughout the year. It feels great to have my own personal goldmine ❤️

Some Tips for the Journey

• Don’t hold yourself back. Get weird! Write down ideas that you think could never be turned into a picture book. You may surprise yourself. P.S. you never have to show anyone your list! Take some advice from one of the most prolific picture book authors out there:

“​​Don't ever write just for a trend or fad, because it's a moving target, and by the time you get your work out there, the trend or fad is gone. Dig deep; don't be afraid to write fiercely. Expose your heart.” Jane Yolen

• Keep your list in one place. I have the habit of writing down ideas on sticky notes and then never seeing them again. I feel frustrated when I know I had a good idea but it’s been lost between my desk and the wall. Make a list on your phone that you look at daily or write down ideas in a notebook that you keep close by.

• Make a goal to write out a picture book manuscript after Storystorm. Now that you’ve got those ideas, make sure to flesh them out. It’s easy to hold on to ideas and let them sit in that list forever. Give yourself a deadline to write out a first draft from your list to help get the ball rolling and getting your book published!

Pterosaur tortellini, anyone? Made with watercolor pencils and procreate.

At this point, I don’t have a huge stack of published books that I can point to and say “this was all because of Storystorm!”, but I do have a long list of ridiculous words, jokes, and phrases that make me smile when I read them.

I want to leave you with some wise wisdom from the great Jane Yolen again, who is a champion of writing as much as you can. Her writing is so beautiful that it inspires me up to my eyeballs.

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”

Until next month, in 2023!

Here’s a cute cat photo to start off the year 💛

Hugs,
Marissa

---

Did you know that I send out book news, my inspirations, and book club recommendations through a monthly newsletter? Sign up below so you don’t miss out ✍️