How to introduce girls to illustration

Learning illustration is perfect for a girl who loves to draw! It adds oomph to her work by making it have more depth. This way, it’s a brilliant work of art!

While storytelling will help your daughter with her ability to put thoughts to words, illustration will aid in turning her imaginations to visualizations! Sounds cool? Read on to know how to get started.

Why illustration is good for girls

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that’s exactly why illustration is a fun way for your daughter to learn how to communicate better. And for younger girls who are yet to learn how to read and write, illustration can be a great medium through which they express themselves.

With illustration, girls will learn the importance of color in their artwork, and how to apply the right ones to convey emotions. They’ll also get to learn about different concepts in drawing like perspective and rendering and others like shading.

Illustration can help with the improvement of fine motor skills too, since they’ll be using their hands a lot.

What does it mean to illustrate?

When people illustrate, they represent thoughts, ideas and words with pictures. Commercials, magazines, teaching materials, movies and even video games employ the use of them. So not only is it a fun spare-time activity, but it’s also a very useful skill to learn!

How to get started with illustrations for girls

The best way to start her journey with illustrations is to begin drawing. She doesn’t need to have a whole story figured out at first. She can even draw doodles! The point of this activity is to help her get comfortable with the art and learn how to control her hand better.

If having a project in mind will help her, then suggest the idea of her drawing objects from her surroundings. You can hunt for inspiration too! Comic books are great resources. Let her collect them, then create a scrapbook full of illustrations.

One thing to note though, she doesn’t have to be perfect at drawing. When she’s first starting out, she may need help finding a style she’s interested in trying (line, cartoon, caricature, etc.). The best way to do this is for her to look at books to see what she’s drawn to and go from there.

Once she’s got that figured out, she can pick up an instructional drawing book, check out tutorials online or even take a class.

What you need to begin illustrating

As a starter, she’ll just require some regular drawing equipment:

A pencil (a regular pencil to start with)
An eraser
A sketch book
Some crayons or colored pencils

Fun illustration projects for girls

Handprint drawing

This handprint drawing is a lovely and simple illustration project for girls. It’s a step up from tracing dotted lines and with projects like this, they’ll learn how to control the muscles in their hand in no time!

Doodle Art

We absolutely adore this project because of how much of an interesting take on drawing it is. As she sees an artwork like this, she’ll learn how to color within lines, and the beauty of neatness! For practice, she can use our I Am An Adventurer, Artist & Athlete: A Coloring Book for Girls to give her an idea.

How to draw people
This is the perfect project for older girls who’ve already gotten a good grip on their pencils! We love how simple this step-by-step guide is, so girls can easily follow the instructions and get their drawings right.