Illustrations

Three of the stories I have written are for very young children. Those stories need illustrations. At first, I thought I would be able to get my husband to illustrate the stories for me, as he is very gifted at drawing and at creating computer graphics. However, having him illustrate the stories for me has not worked out.

Now I have two choices. I can either pay someone else to illustrate my children's stories, or I can illustrate them myself. I may, in the end, have to resort to having an artist illustrate my stories for me, but first, I am going to try and illustrate them myself.

There is one problem with this plan. I am not very good at drawing. In fact, I am so terribly awful at drawing that it would be fair to say that my drawing resembles what it's meant to be as much as a bee resembles a dog, which is to say, not at all.

So what am I to do? Should I just give up? Maybe. But not without trying first. Children's illustrations do not need to be complicated. Simple but cute drawings can sometimes be just as enchanting to a child's eyes as more complicated and elaborate artwork. I just need to do a little learning (I hope).

I am going to spend a little bit of time each week attempting to draw. And I will share those drawings here. Hopefully, each drawing will be an improvement over the last. And hopefully, those of you reading this will give me honest (but not cruel) opinions on my progress.

I recently read an article that stated that, because drawing uses a different part of our brain than writing, even if we are not very good at it, the act of drawing helps to stimulate our creativity. Maybe doing a little drawing will help inspire me to write a bit more of my novel, as well as hopefully giving me some illustrations to use for my children's stories.

It's never a bad thing to learn new skills. And, no matter what happens with these attempts, it's never a bad thing to try something new.