Patrick Collins: Creative Director at Henry Holt

Patrick starts off with some snapshots of lovely authors and illustrators Holt's been lucky enough to publish:

Denise Fleming

Eugene Yelchin

Jacqueline Kelly

among others!

Patrick's session provides illustrators with concrete examples of the five things that make picture book art successful. All good picture book images are strong in

1. Character

2. Action-Storytelling

3. Humor

4. Emotion

5. Simplicity

Two of Patrick's examples are listed below, but there were four more picture books he went over, plus illustrated chapter books, and including a spiffy-looking new nonfiction picture book written by Tanya Lee Stone and illustrated by Marjorie Priceman. Really enlightening and fun to see what an art director picks out as the strongest element or two of every great picture book spread.

The Monster Returns 

Even from the jacket you know what's going to happen, it's hitting the simplicity goal right off the bat, too—limited palette, very stylized, lots of white space.

And even though it's fairly spare art, it allows you to focus in on the emotions of the characters, which are perfectly rendered by the artist.

Chester's Colorful Easter Egg

 Really cool cut-paper art, the flatness of the background cut-paper colors allow Chester to pop in most every spread.

Great expression on both character's face and in body language help hit our goals of artwork full of strong character and emotion.

Thanks, Patrick!