Behind the Scenes: Creating a Children’s Book Illustration in Procreate

In this blog post, I’m sharing a peek behind the scenes of my children’s book portfolio illustration process in Procreate. I created this piece on my trusty 2020 iPad Pro, which I use almost exclusively to bring my illustrations to life. Recently, I’ve been working on developing my picture book portfolio, and I’m trying to be more intentional with each spread I draw. I hope this breakdown provides some inspiration and insight into how I plan and paint a finished children’s book scene.

For this illustration, I imagined a sweet moment between two bunny characters — a shy boy bunny working up the courage to tell a girl bunny he likes her. I’ve been drawing a lot of rabbits lately for another project, so they naturally found their way into this piece. To add depth and storytelling, I also included background characters and forest details that young readers could discover as they linger on the page.

After testing out some composition ideas by sketching out some thumbnails I decided on a composition based on leading lines, which is a type of composition used to guide the viewers eye to end up on the main focus which is the girl bunny. I used elements such as the other characters and the tree to make sure the viewers eye lands on the bunny wherever you look on the page. I tried to frame the scene with foliage and the tree to make it appear cute and cozy, leaving some space at the top for text, as if it were a real children’s picture book spread.

At first, I tried a muted palette, but it didn’t feel quite right for the tone I wanted. I eventually shifted to a more saturated colour palette that better matches my style. I paid special attention to values (light and dark) to ensure that important parts of the scene stood out clearly against the background.

I used a mixture of multiply and add layer blend modes, and kept adjusting the colours to make them darker for shading and definition. 

I wanted to finish the whole illustration with only brushes that I made myself, they are still a work in progress, I still need to come up with names for them all ( which for me is the hardest part!) but here is a few examples of where I’ve used them. I love building texture and layering different types of brushes. 

And so here it is my finished illustration! I love including lots of detail to keep the viewers eye lingering on the page. I’ve added this piece to my illustration portfolio, I’d love to hear your thoughts too—scroll to the bottom and leave a comment, or leave a comment on my Instagram ☺️