How Illustrations Are Born

John Manders' revised illustration for "Pete"

Have you ever wondered how illustrators come up with the images they’ve rendered? I grew up studying cartoons and illustrations trying to figure out how they got from “here” to “there” and learned an immense amount just in studying published works.

John Manders, a friend of mine and fellow member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, is a long-time illustrator of children’s books and has captured the personalities and features of many species of animals in his illustration library.

A recent blog post shows how he created the characters for a children’s book by author Jenny Tripp entitled Pete and Fremont (linked in his blog post). He includes reference photos and a few versions of each character, and it’s fascinating to see how the image grew.

Enjoy “Character Designs” on “John Mander’s Blog”.

---