All about books by children’s illustrator Jim Harris. Jim’s biography, tips for art students, advice and techniques for illustrating picture books. Jim Harris Children’s Books Home Page Tips and Techniques for Art Students Frequently (and Infrequently) Asked Questions about becoming a children’s picture book illustrator. Facts and trivia about a job as an illustrator -- from best-selling children’s artist, Jim Harris Email Jim Harris. Link to Jim Harris Fantasy Art, Caricatures, Portraits and Sporting Art. Jim Harris – The Story of a Children’s Book Illustrator. Learn how Jim became a picture book artist. Creative Writing Tips from Author and Illustrator, Jim Harris Day to Day Life as a Children’s Book Illustrator. Information for students learning about the day to day life of a picture-book illustrator. Illustrating a Picture Book, Start to Finish. The step by step process of illustrating a children’s picture book. Activities for Kids. Classroom reading, writing and math activities with pictures from Jim Harris’s children’s books.

Jim Harris gives painting tips from Three Little Dinosaurs. Information for art students -- about how to use acrylic and oil paints and about cleaning your paintbrush!

Three Little Dinosaurs

 

Go on location with Jim Harris and see how to develop a central character for the Cajun fairy tale Petite Rouge.

Petite Rouge

 

Jim Harris gives tips for young artists from Jack and the Giant. Funny insights about the process of writing and illustrating a book for children.

Jack and the Giant

 

See the adorable puppy characters that fill another Jim Harris’ wiggly-eyeball book. Ten Little Puppies who can’t seem to stay out of trouble! New 2009!

Ten Little Puppies

 

Jim Harris gives pointers on creating vibrantly colored children’s illustrations in a little talk about the use of saturated and unsaturated colors in the Southwestern fractured fairy tale Tortoise and the Jackrabbit.

Tortoise and the Jackrabbit

 

Illustration techniques for students from The Trouble with Cauliflower. Tips for young artists about how to use texture in illustrations for children’s book paintings.

The Trouble with Cauliflower

 

Art tips from The Three Little Javelinas. Jim Harris tells about the jokes illustrators play with their young readers and tells the stories behind some of his most famous picture-book characters.

The Three Little Javelinas

 

Illustration advice by artist Jim Harris from the book The Treasure Hunter. Jim gives tips for art students about using overlapping to make paintings and drawings look realistic.

The Treasure Hunter

 

So, if I become a children’s book illustrator… what kind of people will I be working with? Read Jim’s answer to this important question in his discussion of the humorous picture book, The Bible ABC.

Bible ABC

 

Jim Harris shares illustration techniques from The Three Little Cajun Pigs. Learn how to illustrate a picture book using visual rhythm and diagonal lines.

Three Little Cajun Pigs

 

Tips by illustrator Jim Harris about using parody in children’s books, based on the Southwestern title, Slim and Miss Prim. Thoughts for creative students about illustrators’ spelling woes, too!

Slim and Miss Prim

 

Dinosaur's Night Before Christmas, a holiday story as told by Jim Harris - the perfect Christmas gift for dinosaur lovers

Dinosaur's Night Before
Christmas

 

Jim Harris tells about starting out in a career as an illustrator. Funny stories about life as a ‘starving artist.’

Towns Down Underground

Jim Harris Talks About Illustrating… 

Ten Little Dinosaurs… the book for kids who love dinosaurs. Enthusiastically illustrated by fantasy artist Jim Harris.

Ten Little Dinosaurs

From the moment I first saw the manuscript for Ten Little Dinosaurs… I loved this book.  It has funny rhymes, funny dinosaurs, funny eyeballs… and funny characters like this little guy: 

‘Dr. Fossil Hunter’ from Ten Little Dinosaurs… the dinosaur book with wiggly eyes. Paleontologist and reptile art, courtesy Jim Harris.

Coming up with funny characters is like inventing new people… and I find it highly entertaining.

But there are some things about illustrating that are a little harder work.

Illustrating Around Googly Eyeballs

One of the tricky parts about illustrating an eyeball-animation book is dealing with the holes in the pages.  As you can see in Ten Little Dinosaurs, the eyeballs take center stage on the left side of each spread… so that means a major character absolutely, positively has to go in that spot. This might not seem like a big deal… but we illustrators are used to deciding for ourselves where our characters are going to sit or stand or fly around on the page!  

‘My What Big Teeth You Have!’ T-Rex visits the dentist in Ten Little Dinosaurs, the dinosaur counting book.

Then if you look at the right side of the page in Ten Little Dinosaurs, you’ll see two gaping holes… and what in the world can be done with them?  We illustrators aren’t used to having holes in our paper either!!!

Sometimes it works to leave them as “air”, and push all the artwork around them, like I did on the Supersaurus page. 

 

‘Super-cool Supersauruses’ Teacher has a word with some rule-breaking supersauruses in Ten Little Dinosaurs, the best-selling dinosaur book for kids.

But on some pages the holes are smack dab where you need a major part of the picture to be… so you have to paint around them, like I did on the Tyrannosaurus page.

Lots and lots of T-rex dinosaurs. (More than any dentist should ever have to deal with.) From the pages of Ten Little Dinosaurs.

Then again, sometimes it’s fun to make the holes into round objects.  On the Archaeopteryx page… the holes are hot-air balloons

 

‘Archaeoptyryx Tweaks His Beak’ One more feather-head bites the dust. More dino-danger from Ten Little Dinosaurs!

 

And on the Anklyosaurus page… the holes are the car headlights.

 

‘Ankylosaurs’ from Ten Little Dinosaurs… the book for kids who love DINOSAURS!

So all in all, even though eyeballs are a little harder to design around… they’re a fun challenge. I'm looking forward to doing more!

 

Buy the book Ten Little Dinosaurs at Amazon.Buy an original illustration from Ten Little Dinosaurs.

Link to Jim Harris Children’s Books Home PageEmail the page ‘Ten Little Dinosaurs, A Wiggly-Eyeball Counting Book’ to a friend.

Images and Text © 2009 Jim Harris. All Rights Reserved