Guest Blog: Where Illustrators Find Inspiration!
This month, we have a special guest blog from artist (and Storytime intern) Anna Kosova!
Hi!! I’m Anna, an illustrator from Berlin, and I’m currently doing an internship here at Storytime! While studying at university, I realised that children’s book illustration is the direction I feel most drawn to. In this blog post, I wanted to talk about how I look for ideas for my illustrations – and how the most interesting ones often come about completely by accident!
Sketch and final version of the book spread
For a long time, it seemed to me that a good illustration had to begin with a perfect idea. That the artist first comes up with an entire world in their head – and only then transfers it onto paper.
I probably thought this way because I’ve always been quite a structured and rational person who likes planning everything in advance and organising ideas before starting. So even before opening my sketchbook, I wanted to understand exactly what I was going to draw and how it would turn out.
Stages of developing a character design
But the harder I tried to come up with an idea beforehand, the more creatively stuck I became. Sometimes, I spent so much time searching for something ‘perfect’ that I completely forgot the most important and fun part – actually drawing!
That’s when I began noticing something: my favourite ideas almost never appear when I’m focussing on making them perfect. The best ideas emerge naturally out of things I see in the world around me!
From sketch to final illustration
Sometimes it occurs during a walk after the rain, when a puddle’s shape suddenly looks like some strange little creature. Sometimes it’s a cloud that starts looking like a cat wearing an oversized hat. And sometimes it’s shadows on a wall that turn into the silhouette of a princess riding a horse.
I think many of us did something similar as children – looking for animals in clouds, silhouettes in wallpaper patterns, or shapes hidden in the designs of old carpets. Back then everything felt like a game, and even the most ordinary things could suddenly become an entire little theatre full of scenes, characters, and stories! And I think that this feeling of playfulness and randomness is a very important part of creativity.
All these little details around us are already a great source of inspiration, but there are also special exercises that artists use when blocked creatively. They work in a similar way: they simply draw random blobs and shapes on paper, and then try to find images in them, drawing characters or little scenes over the top.
I absolutely love the that sometimes it’s not an idea that creates the drawing, but rather a drawing, a random shape, or a tiny detail!
Halloween card illustration
Another time, I was sketching cats in different poses when I suddenly noticed that one of the patterns I drew in the fur of one looked a bit like a skeleton. I thought it would be funny to draw cats whose fur looked like little skeletons – and later that random idea actually turned into a Halloween card illustration.
Sometimes, these random sketches can lead to discovering completely new things you didn’t know much about before! For example, while sketching an octopus, I accidentally doodled a smaller shape next to it and immediately thought of drawing a tiny baby octopus beside the bigger one. That little accident eventually led me to discover Dumbo octopuses – adorable deep-sea octopuses with tiny ear-like fins!
The more I noticed these accidental ideas appearing in my own drawings, the more curious I became about whether other artists work in a similar way. That’s how I discovered more about the creative process of Hayao Miyazaki – the master of Japanese animation and creator of countless incredible worlds, characters, and stories that touch the heart and soul. I was really surprised when I found out that he never fully knows how the film he’s working on is going to end! Instead of limiting himself with a fixed story, he searches for shapes and images through sketches and drawings first. His imagination slowly develops interesting characters, tiny details, and the atmosphere of a future world. Only later does the story itself begin to grow from those accidental discoveries!
Here are some images of the process
This exact approach is helping me a lot right now while working on my own project! For a long time, I wanted to create a picture book about birds, but I had absolutely no clear ideas for a specific story. So instead of forcing myself to invent a plot straight away, I simply took my sketchbook and started drawing. I looked at photos of my favourite birds, read funny little facts about them and experimented with shapes and silhouettes on paper without fully understanding where any of it would lead.
At one point, I accidentally drew a small shape above a bird’s head that looked like a leaf, and suddenly I imagined a tiny bird using it like an umbrella while hiding from the rain. From that one little image, an entire story slowly began to grow!
And that’s exactly why I love illustration so much! It changes the way you look at the world around you, and something very small and seemingly insignificant can begin growing into an entire world…
Anna Kosova is an aspiring children’s book illustrator with a love for storytelling and nature. Inspired especially by animals and people, she enjoys using bright colours to create cozy, warm, dreamlike illustrations. Alongside working on book covers, short stories, and picture book projects, she continues experimenting with different visual styles and developing her portfolio.
You can view her portfolio here, and check out her work on her instagram profile here.