The Gentle Pen - "Drawn Out and Caffeinated: The Untold Truth About Illustrating Your Own Book"

Ah, the glamorous life of a children’s book author-slash-illustrator. You know the one—cozy sweaters, morning sun streaming in through curtains, classical music playing softly in the background while inspiration flows like maple syrup in spring.

Yeah. That’s a lie.

Let’s talk about what it’s really like to illustrate your own children’s book. Spoiler alert: it involves a shocking amount of coffee, a suspicious number of snacks, and the slow transformation of your dominant hand into a crab claw.

The Drawing That Ate Two Days of Your Life

It all begins with a burst of enthusiasm. You’ve written your manuscript. You love your characters. “How hard can it be to draw one little girl feeding her horse or her pig or her goat?” you think.

Oh, sweet summer child.

You start with the sketch. One light pencil stroke, two, three... twenty-seven hours later, you’ve redrawn the girl’s nose sixteen times and gone through every goat reference photo on the internet. You’ve studied hooves. You’ve questioned goat anatomy. You’ve questioned your life choices.

Each tiny detail becomes its own Everest. The shoelaces. The pink colour of her shirt. The way her hair blows in the wind. You try drawing it from above. From below. From behind. Why is her head the size of a pumpkin in one sketch and a blueberry in the next?

By day two, you’ve spent more time on this single image than some people take to renovate their entire home. You’re squinting at your screen, looking at the text - like a pirate with astigmatism, and your hand has started twitching involuntarily—what seasoned illustrators know as “The Illustrator Claw.”

At this point, you’ve forgotten how to hold a spoon, your back has more knots than a fishing net, and you're Googling things like “can you get carpal tunnel from drawing a goat?”

The Coffee Catastrophe

But then—victory! You finally nail it. The composition works. The characters are expressive. The goat is—if you do say so yourself—adorably so much like a real goat. You lean back. You sigh with joy. You reach for your well-earned cup of coffee. And in that instant… disaster strikes.

Your elbow hits the mug.

In a majestic, slow-motion arc, your full cup of coffee performs an Olympic-level dive across your desk, landing directly on the one thing you didn’t back up yet: the illustration.

The splash is catastrophic. The goat now looks like he’s mid-latte explosion. The girl’s face has melted into mushroom soup. The hours—days—of work? Gone. Just like that. You sit there, staring at your ruined masterpiece, trying not to cry onto your keyboard.

You consider pretending it’s a new art style—“Caffeine Expressionism”—but even you don’t believe that.

The Spiral and the Comeback

So, what do you do?

You groan. You mutter things your grandmother wouldn’t be proud of. You may even dramatically flop onto the couch and declare you’re never drawing again.

But then—because you’re a creator, and because somewhere inside you is a slightly deranged optimist—you clean up the mess, pour a new cup of coffee (now placed in a completely separate room), and you start again.

Because that’s what illustrating is: relentless, repetitive, often ridiculous work.

But when it’s done—when the drawing finally comes together, and you turn the page to see a book full of life, joy, and mischief—you remember why you did it.

You did it for the laugh a child will burst out with when they see that goat make a mess.You did it for the reader who will flip back just to look at the page of the horse again.You did it because, deep down, you’re absolutely bananas about creating something that matters.

Moral of the story: Keep your coffee at a distance, take stretch breaks, and embrace the madness. You’re not just an illustrator—you’re a storytelling warrior armed with pencils, paper, and possibly a wrist brace.

(And next time? Save your file. Twice.)

Genetly Remembering to be gentle with the coffee!

Liv

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