Free Guide to Create Your Own Portfolio for Children's Illustration

Prepare a portfolio that sells your skills and expresses your unique style, with this free downloadable PDF guide

“Your portfolio is a representation of yourself to the world,” says illustrator Marissa Valdez (@marissaarts). Her book, Ambitious Girl, was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and through her Domestika course she helps students get ready for a career in children’s illustration, by creating a strong portfolio.

A portfolio shares your best work so that you can land your dream clients and projects. But this can be a daunting task—how do you know what to include, and what to leave out?

Read on to discover Marissa’s top tips and download a complete guide including all the elements of an effective illustration portfolio.

Your portfolio could come in the form of a website, PDF document, or print-out, but in every case the main goal is to help art directors and other decision makers know if you’re a good fit for a project. Not only is it about showing off your best work, it’s about demonstrating range and the strength of your process.

Marissa includes eight elements of a strong children’s illustration portfolio in her full guide, but here are just a couple of those elements to get you thinking.

Consider what stories you want to tell

Start at the top: what would be your dream project? Who would the client be, what’s the narrative, what’s the setting, and how do the characters look and behave? Try to construct your portfolio around these elements and demonstrate how you are already working on similar stories.

Be strict with this: if you really disliked creating a piece, it might not need to stay in your portfolio. Only include what will lead to the jobs you actually want to take on. Marissa gives the example that she wouldn’t want to illustrate a story with a car as the main character, so she avoids having cars placed prominently in her portfolio.

Center the children and their families

Child characters, and a wide range of them, are your portfolio’s centerpiece. Around them, ensure to include the parents, grandparents, siblings, and pets who would populate stories around the main character. Choose illustrations that show off their relationships and fun reactions.

Anthropomorphic animal characters are also worth considering. How do you show emotions and actions through your animal protagonists?

Thread a narrative through your portfolio!

This tip requires some big-picture thinking. Ensure that overall you show a range of character emotions, and include both more dramatic and more simple imagery. Think about how your audience will read through your work, and what reactions you want them to have.

Download the complete guide to making your portfolio

Ready to create your own portfolio to showcase your work? After clicking on the link below, you’ll find a ZIP file in your Downloads folder, called Guide to Create A Children's Illustration Portfolio by Marissa Valdez. Inside, Marissa outlines her eight elements of a strong portfolio. You’ll learn how to effectively highlight your characterisation skills, backgrounds, layouts, and more.

Check out Marissa’s full course, Online Portfolio for Children’s Book Illustrators. In this course, Marissa walks you through the process of creating a vibrant online gallery to kickstart your career as an illustrator.

Begin a career in children’s illustration with these resources

1. Explore even more courses with this list focused on creating children’s books.

2. Have you thought about entering competitions? These five children’s illustration contests are a great way to get exposure and even book deals.

3. For some inspiration, try reading our five top recommended illustrating kids’ books!