When your deciding on the wardrobe for your children’s book characters, what kinds of things do you take into consideration? What about when you start drawing the bedroom, city block, or park that the story takes place in?
Color is a big choice in your kid’s book—and with some deductions and questioning, you can choose colors that speak as loud as the words!
Let’s look at choosing powerful colors for your illustrations based on settings throughout the book and characters in the story.
copyright Crystal Smith
How Can I Express the Time of Day or Season with Color?
This one is about finding the boundaries in your story. Maybe your entire book takes place in the evening or at night—that gives you a few boundaries to use in your color choices! Or, if you kid’s book is all about autumn, then you have some guidelines for a lot of the colors you’ll be using.
NOTE: If you’ve already chosen your main colors based on theme or emotion (see this article here), then you can adjust those colors throughout your book based on the season or time of day without changing them completely. This creates a lovely continuity.
copyright Crystal Smith
Seasonal Changes in Color
The same forest looks much different in spring than winter. However, what about a city block? Before you dive deep into color theory and lighting, try these simple tips:
We associate spring with warmer tones and lighter colors.
Often summer is shown with bold saturations and deeper tones.
Fall can be insinuated through more natural choices like browns and golds, with an eye on making the light more golden (just like the tones the lower sun will give off in the fall season.)
Create a wintery feeling with purples, cool blues, greys and whites. Pay especial attention to the colors of the shadows.
Take a look at photos of your yard in different seasons and see what color changes you can pick out. Or, try googling images of a certain place (eg. New York) in different seasons to see how it differs.
Alternately, you can be a bit of a creeper and use google maps street view. Just find different cities where the shots were taken at different times of the day.
copyright Crystal Smith
Showing Time of Day with Color
When a children’s book takes place throughout different times of day (starting in the morning and ending in the evening for example), then the colors may shift throughout the story.
Morning light is softer and warmer - often featuring yellows and pinks
Mid-day light is bright, with more saturation - although sometimes super hot noon sun will make everything a bit bleached-out
Evening light has darker colors with less saturation and more purple tones
Nighttime light comes from the moon, stars, or artificial lighting like windows, lamps etc.
Does this mean you need a completely different color palette whenever the story moves to a different time of day? No! You can alter your chosen colors to suit the time shown using the tips above.
copyright Crystal Smith
Above: nighttime illustrations that use light from lamps, fires, and a bit of an imaginary ‘northern lights’ style background…just to have somewhere to put the text! (from “Maybe A Whale” written by Kirsten Pendreigh, illustrations by me)
I also love to use sunrise and sunset in illustrations whenever I can, as it creates an excuse to use certain colors. (Hello, pink!) It also gives a magical feeling to the picture and lets you play with light and shadow a lot.
copyright Crystal Smith
How to Make Familiar Settings Interesting with Color
Does the story take place in the backyard? Maybe on a sidewalk? Doesn’t seem that interesting at first…but then we dive deeper!
Look past the obvious. This is a children’s book, so although it usually needs to be grounded in reality, there is a lot of leeway to play with!
Maybe instead of blah-grey, the concrete is a lovely light purple? Can the grass be more blue-green, with deep mysterious shadows?
copyright Crystal Smith
In the above illustration, taken from “Mother Aspen” (written by Annette LeBox and illustrated by me) there is a strange purple/pink color along the back of the trees. What exactly does this represent?
Well, it could be part of a sunset...
…or it could just be an imaginary light/color addition that I used to add contrast with all the white snow! Even the smallest bunny in the background is blue, rather than white, as it hides in the shadows.
Surprise yourself with unique color choices in your settings.
How do you change-up the colors for your settings in kid’s book illustrations? Let me know in the comments!
Choosing Colors Based On Setting
If you are choosing the main colors of your children’s book based on the setting, then make sure to do a lot of research. Google images, Flickr (that’s still a thing, right?), Pinterest…
A book that takes place in a park in the summer will probably have to use green as a main color. But what kind of green?
Will you have the main green be more yellow or more blue? Could you push it and have a lot of definitely-blue leaves in with the green ones? It can depend on what kind of book it is, especially if it is non-fiction.
Knowing that you are using green, you can consult a color wheel to see what options you have for contrasting hues! (Try Paletton or check out my other color picking tool options in this article here.)
Above; maybe bold magenta wouldn’t have been an obvious choice, but it compliments the green and stands out in a unique way.
Although the setting can create guidelines for your color choices, don’t let it box you into boring color combinations!
Using Characters to Choose Colors
Not only can we choose colors based on characters in the book, but we can also convey things about the characters based on our color choice! This is a way to draw between the lines of text and communicate more to the viewer.
Try writing out some of the characteristics of the main people in the story and see what colors come to mind when you do.
If a character is shy, what color might they wear?
What would a boy who only wears black convey? (What do you want it to convey?)
A kid interested in nature might wear different colors than one who loves skateboarding!
How could you show a younger character vs an older character using color?
Another way to use color is to show a relationship between two characters. Would an older and younger sister dress similar? What about a married couple?
copyright Crystal Smith
In “Maybe A Whale” the daughter always wears warm colors like red, orange or pink. The mother wears cooler tones like purples and blues.
This not only makes it easier to tell them apart at a glance but it reflects their characters. The mother is calm, connected to the ocean. The daughter is stubborn, unsure of herself, and hasn’t found a connection with the ocean yet.
copyright Crystal Smith
Now that I’ve attached these colors to the characters, I can use them to insinuate things: in the tent, the blanket covering both of them is purple—the mother’s main color—expressing her love encompassing her daughter.
Once you establish a color for a character, it can also become a symbol or representation of that character throughout the story.
Color can speak as loud as words—but for a kid’s book you can only use so many colors without becoming too busy and confusing. Choose wisely!
copyright Crystal Smith
Learn more about me as an illustrator or check out the kid’s books I’ve illustrated over on my website here.
Say hello over on BlueSky where I hang out quite a bit.