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@jenn I second that! Great to check out the video!

I'm super familiar with Watterson's Calving and Hobbes. Not familiar at all with Kascht's work, but I can absolutely see how this book is a departure from each's "usual" style and how satisfying that must have been.

To be fair Watterson has been away from C&H for so long now, and it sounds like his recent work is actually in line with this more raw and abstracted image making he advocates for in the video.

Super interesting. Even more so for the "behind-the-scenes" information.

Anybody else seen/read the picture book THE MYSTERIES that Bill Watterson (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) co-wrote and illustrated? It came out fall 2023.

It's . . . interesting.
I just got a copy from my local library. It's so wildly different than what he's best known for that I'm still processing if I'm into it or not.

It's expressly intended for an adult audience, and I'm always looking for the picture book format that isn't directed at kids.

Would like to hear from those who have opinions on this book. And if you haven't read it yet -- here's my recommendation to check it out.

@Norman-Morana Super impressive draw-over! Nicely done!

@Yiming-Wu It's actually quite common to have a slightly different rendering on background elements, and helps the characters and foreground elements stand out more. Less contrast, less details, and less rendering on background elements all help the readability of the overall image

@Mimi-Simon Querying is tedious but worth it! The main key is follow up. It's not about how many different companies you query, it's about how many emails you send to the same company. After 3-4 emails, most companies will reply even if just to say no. I usually email once a month with a couple new art pieces to show them!

@Jeanne-M-Bowman My pleasure!

@Jeanne-M-Bowman You're very good at drawing backgrounds, but it looks like your draw the whole neighborhood and then put the characters in it. That's actually backwards! At the planning stage, you decide where you characters will be and then design the background behind them in a way that won't interfere too much with reading them. Unlike with photography, you're not stuck working with reality. You can design the environment to suit your needs.

You have a very detailed house right behind your character, and that's really attracting attention but doesn't really need to be there. The houses left and right tell us already where we are, so in the middle you could just put a tree and suggest a less detailed house behind it, or even leave it empty. We still understand where we are The further away elements are, the less detailed they can be. Right now your background has a very high amount of details, and that does attract attention a bit too much. I would simplify a bit where that improves readability (for example, through the car window).

You can also push your filter much more to create depth and make this easier to read. It's too subtle right now. You can make it especially strong around the character to make him stand out.

Right behind the boy's face, I reduce the high contrast of the house's corner (which attracts too much attention) and covered up the 2 windows, opting for a simple brick texture to suggest a building. Then the tree and filter!

@Mimi-Simon Hi Mimi!
Before I got an agent, I worked as a picture book illustrator for about 4 years on my own. My first book project with a publisher was when I submitted not only my portfolio but also a possible book project, they accepted it and we started working on that, later on, we collaborated on other projects as well. Thanks to this one book, other publishers in my country took notice of me and offered more work.
I would focus on smaller local publishers, and try to come up with your own book proposals (educational picture books, board books, picture books,...)
I also learned how to work in InDesign, how to layout a book, format a ready-to-print PDF and other publishing-related stuff - which was often a big thing for these small publishers.
Once I had my foot in the door with publishers in my country, the stream of incoming book projects was quite steady. I decided to find an agent because I wanted to focus on my own books and the US market, bigger publishers. But I am very grateful I could have this start with smaller publishers. It was an amazing work experience, very different from self-published authors.
Within the US market, what helped me get some book projects, was my Instagram. I try to keep it alive, and even though it's not giving me like a ton of book projects, from time to time an editor contacts me for a possible work... (I mention instagram because it's totally unrelated to me having an agent)
Hope my tips help you a bit. Good luck!

@ArtistErin Well even in Gmail you can schedule emails right? So write an invoice reminder, duplicate it like 20 times, and schedule 1 for every week. You can even CC everyone at the company you can find email addresses for, so you get more out of each email Have fun!

@Enni-Heikura I like 3 and 4 because your style is very simple, like a watercolor doodle. It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbs style. I do think sometimes your least rendered versions lack contrast. But even if you're using less shading layers, you can have more contrast by having a darker base color.

I would suggest to you to show the strongest highlights by leaving the highlight area white, like on a watercolor. And you could use your black pen to fill up some areas as blocks of black, for example the hats in this illustration. All this would add contrast without the need to over-render your illustration.

The strength of your style is the simple, doodly feel of it Compared to other artists who can render more, it doesn't take much for your pieces to look over-rendered because less is more with your style.