Congratulations! You’ve found a number of illustrators you like and are now ready to make the final decision on whom you should hire to illustrate your children’s book. And that’s where we can request illustrator sample sketches.
But How Should You Decide?
Once you have narrowed it down to about 6–10 illustrators, you can request a sample illustration. If you do your research and personalize your message, most illustrators are more than happy to do so. Be sure to approach at least eight, as there will always be a couple who won’t respond.
How To Request Illustrator Samples
Please be respectful of each artist’s time, and the effort he or she puts into this process. If you should decide not to work with a certain talent, please let him or her know. Be sure to do so respectfully, and without closing any doors, in case you should decide to work with the artist on another project of yours sometime in the future.
What to Pay Attention to Before You Request Illustrator Sample Sketches
Besides helping you decide which illustrator to pick based on their artistic skills, this sample request will also help to see whether or not the illustrator is able to follow your written instructions.
Depending on which platform you’re using, you will be provided with an artist’s completion rate, i.e. the percentage of work that a particular artist has accepted AND completed. If your project requires the artist to draw multiple images, a higher completion rate is definitely important and something to consider, as you don’t want him or her to drop the project in the middle of the process. If this happened, you’d then have to find a new illustrator and would lose valuable time.
Here’s an artist profile from www.freelancer.com:
With a completion rate of 98% and a repeat hire rate of 35%, this is a likely candidate, depending on whether or not I like his or her actual sample illustration.
Sample Sketches
I usually illustrate my children’s books myself, but for my very first chapter book, I decided to go with an illustrator.
Here are a number of sample sketches I received for one of my sample requests. My brief scene description read as follows:
“[…] SAMPLE SCENE: black and white sketch; boy standing in driveway next to car (car door still open); time of day: dusk, right before sun is setting; boy looking curiously at house in front of him (perspective: corner of majestic house); bushes to the side; dark shadow visible behind bushes. […]”
I received all sketches free of charge and in a matter of days. The key is to be respectful throughout the entire hiring process, and artists are more than willing to comply with your requests.
I hope you found this helpful. Just remember, it never hurts to ask.
Happy creating!
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