Illustration for young readers
Pictures worth one more story.
Children are a tough crowd. They'll read the same book four hundred times and notice the day a character changes shoes. I draw books, covers and characters that hold up to that kind of attention.
Portfolio
Selected work
Covers, characters, crowd scenes and things meant to be played with. Click any piece to see it bigger.
Ways to work together
What I make
Picture books
Full interior spreads, cover to endpapers. The character on page thirty two is still the one from page one, nose and all.
Chapter-book covers
The one image that has to make a nine-year-old pull the book off the shelf. Series-ready, with room for titling.
Character design
A character drawn from every angle with a full range of expressions, so everyone else on the project draws them the same way.
Educational & activity art
Board games, worksheets, school projects, coloring pages and borders. Art built to be used, not just looked at.
Custom orders
Commission a piece
Same process whether it's a whole book or a single picture. You see the work as it goes, not only at the end.
Tell me the story
Email me what you're making, roughly how many illustrations, and when you need it. No formal brief needed. A paragraph is plenty.
Sketches first
I send rough sketches so you can move things around while it's still easy to change. We agree on a quote and a schedule before any final art starts.
Final art, print-ready
Finished files at print resolution, in the formats your printer or publisher asks for, with a round of revisions built in.
Helpful things to include when you write
- What it's for: book, cover, invitation, classroom project, gift
- How many pieces, and roughly what size or format
- Your deadline, even an approximate one
- Any art you've seen (mine or anyone's) that feels close to what you want
- Your budget range, if you have one. It helps me suggest the right scope.
About
My two favorite things
I'm Batsheva Kreisman. I read a lot and I draw a lot, and illustrating for children is the most direct way I've found to do both at the same time.
A good story and a good picture do different jobs. The picture is what a child sees before they can read a word of it, and what they keep going back to long after they can. I'm interested in the kind that gives them something to find, not the kind that just fills the space next to the text.
My style varies with the project, but I always come back to detail. A picture can hold much more than the moment it's showing, and that's the part I spend the most time on: things in the corners, something happening in the background, enough that a child who has read the book ten times still finds something new.
Get in touch
Send me the idea
Even a half-formed one. Books, covers, characters, or something that doesn't have a name yet.