Dynamic Animal Illustration for Children’s Stories

Learn to draw anthropomorphic characters that bring joy to young readers by exploring the fundamentals of animal anatomy, posing, and stylization

• Introduction
• The Basic Body Structure
• Building around the Structure
• Developing the Character
• Final project

Illustrating for children’s stories is an opportunity to draw evocative and playful characters that bring joy to young readers. Illustrator Julie Mellan turned her childhood love for drawing into a full-time career and has since worked on children’s books published by Penguin Random House, Clavis, and Fleurus.

In this course, Julie teaches you how to create dynamic character illustrations of your own. Explore how to use animal anatomy, observation, and other drawing techniques to illustrate expressive anthropomorphic characters for children’s stories. Light up the imagination of young readers through character illustration.

This is Julie’s second Domestika course. In her first, Animal Characters in Watercolor for Children’s Books, she takes you through the process of bringing animal characters to life in watercolor form.

• About Me
• Influences
• The Materials Needed
• Defining the Intention: the Action Line
• The Three Parts of an Animal
• The Perspective
• Animal Anatomy
• Observation
• Stylization
• Doodling
• The Sketch
• Structure, Stability, and Volumes
• Honing and Final Touches
• Anthropomorphic Characters
• Dynamic Animal Illustration for Children’s Stories