Picturebook Illustration: Explore Color and Composition

Melissa Castrillón is a freelance illustrator and designer with a mix of English and Colombian roots. Growing up in a creative family, she knew from the age of five that she wanted to draw for a living. While studying an MA in children’s book illustration at the Anglia Ruskin University, she discovered screen printing, and with it, a new way to approach her artwork, focusing on color and composition.

Melissa has illustrated over 25 book covers and more than ten picturebooks, collaborating with publishers like Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Bloomsbury, and Scholastic. She has also written three of her own, Mighty Min, The Balcony and Can You Keep a Secret?, which have been translated into more than 20 languages. In 2019, she was awarded the Gold medal by the Society of Illustrators in New York for The Balcony. That same year, she was asked to redesign the covers for Philip Pullman’s popular trilogy His Dark Materials.