Coming Soon: How to Write, Illustrate, and Publish Your Children’s Picture Book!
Might Could Make a Book (the book!)
I’ve been hard at work the past couple of months working on a special new project and it is almost ready to share with you! As I finish up, I thought I’d share a little snippet from this project to let you in on what I’ve been doing.
Below, you’ll find the Introduction to my newest book (coming in March/April!): Might Could Make a Book: How to Write, Illustrate, and Publish Your Children’s Picture Book!
This book is similar to my last, Sketchbook to Style: Discover your Artistic Style in Your Sketchbook, but is less workbook-y and more book-book-y. In this book, I lay out everything I know about my children’s books and all the information, tips, techniques, and knowledge you need to know to make your own! While there are no specific assignments, I do suggest exercises and processes to try as you work on creating your own picture book.
Here’s a peek at the Table of Contents to show you everything that’s covered in the book. These page numbers are not accurate though—the book is sitting at 150 pages right now, and I’m not done yet!
I’m very excited and proud of this book and can’t wait to share it with you soon! In the meantime, here’s a peek at the Introduction! (P.S. And a lil’ something extra for paid subscribers at the end!)
Introduction
Hi! I’m Christine Nishiyama, illustrator and writer at Might Could Studios. I make books, write essays, and draw in my sketchbook. I’ve kept a sketchbook drawing practice for 20+ years and have been a full-time, professional artist for 10+ years.
Over the past decade, I’ve taught more than 100,000 aspiring and established artists, helping them learn new skills, grow their confidence, and make more art. Many of my online classes focus on specific art techniques and processes, like composition and gesture drawing. But my true passion is creating illustrated books. Making books combines all of my loves: drawing, writing, and designing. My two classes on picture book writing and illustrating have been taken by over 14,000 students. But a lot has happened since I created those two classes in 2014!
In 2017, I self-published my first book We Are Fungi, a children’s picture book about the kingdom of fungi. In 2019 I signed a book deal with Scholastic and in 2020, Happy Paws (Layla and the Bots #1) written by Vicky Fang, was published. The second, third, and fourth books in that series followed in 2020-2022. I am currently working on the final art for my next children’s book, We Are Jellyfish.
And so, with all that new experience and knowledge I learned on the job and in the real world, I decided to revisit the content from my picture book classes. The book you’re reading now combines all the information from those classes, updated with professional expertise. Here, I outline my authentic book-making process for you to follow as you create your own picture book.
Using my We Are Fungi book as an example, I show you every step from idea to manuscript to storyboard to final art to publishing (both submitting to traditional publishers and self-publishing).
It took me years to create We Are Fungi. I had to scrape together all the skills and knowledge I could from books, classes, videos, and expensive professional events. And much of that content was far out of date, created before print-on-demand, email marketing, and even Photoshop existed. The rest of it, I had to figure out myself.
So, in this book, I’m sharing everything I know about making picture books: writing, illustrating, traditional publishing, self-publishing, printing, and marketing. It’s all here in one place, so you don’t have to waste your precious creative time searching when you could be writing and drawing.
Making a book is a big project and requires time, discipline, and dedication. It can be both a joy and a slog. And that is where I find the Might Could mindset becomes helpful. The phrase “might could” is Southern slang which means you may be able to do something in the future. As in, if I were to ask you: “Are you going to make your own picture book?” You would respond: “I don’t know, but I might could!”
Call it redundant and bad grammar if you like. But to me, it represents a realistically optimistic point of view. Making a picture book is hard work, and who knows what will happen, but gosh darn it, let’s give it a go.
You never know what might could happen!
Woohoo! I hope the Introduction gets you excited for the book! I’m finishing final edits and creating the book cover right now and then will be ready to release it into the wild!
I’d love to hear what you think or what you would be most excited to learn about in this book in the comments below (if you’re a paid subscriber) or you can reply to this email if not! Are you working on a picture book right now too? Or dreaming of a book idea? Let me know!
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And lastly, for my lovely, amazing paid subscribers, you can keep reading below and read the whole first chapter of the book!
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