S1 Ep. 6 Illumination on Book Illustration

I’m here today with artist and illustrator Christina Wald. She’s done over 60 children’s books and artwork for many other kinds of books and magazines. Welcome, Christina. So how did you get into illustrating?

Christina: You know, I had always wanted to be an illustrator and actually, when I went to school, most schools don’t offer illustration programs, so I actually went to school for an industrial design program rather than illustration. And after I finished school, I just started showing my portfolio around and I wanted to really do comics, but I was very slow at that point.

You know, when you’re in your early twenties and to set context for people that are younger that might be listening. There wasn’t a lot of digital art. So everything was completely done by hand and I was a bit slow I actually started doing role playing game art in the nineties. I did work for Dungeons and Dragons and Wizards of the Coast and some card games based on Lord of the Rings.

It was a good place to kind of get trained, and that’s sort of how I started doing illustration. And obviously my journey has been a very long one.

Lisa: How did you first get into illustrating for children’s books?

Christina: Well, for the decade of the nineties, I did a lot of role playing game artwork and sort of at the end of the nineties, several companies that I worked for went under and so I started refocusing my portfolio and I worked at an ad agency for a couple of years. And then like in the early 2000s, I got contacted by Scholastic to do Scholastic magazines, which they would do these wonderful see through issues where like on one side it would show a scene with all these animals or, you know, they had a bunch of different types of them.

I did ones with animals. And then you would hold it up to the light and print it on the back. You would see hidden stuff. So the first one I did was of a garden and you saw all the animals and then you saw the dirt. And when you held it up to light, you could see all the roots and the animals under and the earthworms and all that sort of thing.

So that’s kind of how I started doing children’s magazines. And then shortly after I started getting contacted by people to do children’s books, I got contacted by Grosset & Dunlap, which is part of Penguin. I got contracted by Publications International to do a book on Animals of the World, and I just sort of started getting all these books on animals, and that’s sort of how it started around 2003, 2004.

You’ve done a lot for the traditional publishers. What about indie authors?

Christina: I think most of my work was sort of traditional publishing till oh, I think indie has been sprinkled in. I have certainly done stuff for fairly small publications and really in recent years I’ve been doing more and more of it as publishing has changed because when I started there was a lot more in place to make the how you released a book and how people did media and that sort of thing, how all of that worked was different sort of or evolving than it is now.

If that makes sense. You know, and I don’t know if maybe COVID accelerated that, but really the way people buy things now is all online. And that probably has been somewhat disastrous for, you know, book companies. And I suppose you have kind of a trifecta, too, with libraries and schools not having the funds anymore either. So I think you’re seeing a transition of how the whole marketplace works.

Lisa: But indie publishing with all these big houses going, either joining each other and becoming super monsters and then these little ones popping up, it’s kind of like the Wild West in publishing. It seems like.

Christina: It really has transitioned in a big way. And I think it’s because I never could. You get such good quality as you can now when you publish a book and now when you publish a book, you still have to commit to making it a decent product. You can’t just design it yourself in Word and you send it to a printer and hope somebody is going to buy it.

I mean, people are still able to tell from a professionally produced product to something that seems, I don’t want to use the word amateurish because that’s probably not quite the right word, but with print on demand all the different ways you can make your book. It really looks no different than anything anyone else gets.

As a matter of fact, I think even bigger publishers are doing smaller and smaller print runs because again, this gets into the logistics of being a publishing business with warehousing and, you know, shipping and all that stuff. I think it’s only certain books that get printed in the millions. I know when I first started, one of my first books that I did for Grosset & Dunlap was put in the Scholastic Book Club, so they printed a ton of those.

I don’t know if they do those sorts of print runs anymore. I mean, obviously they still have Scholastic Book Club, but I think the way a lot of people buy books now is they look at a thumbnail and decide if they like it or they hear word of mouth or, you know, influencers or blogs or get sort of indications of what’s good to read to your kids.

I think that this is an exciting time of innovation for kids books and all types of publishing. But it requires an entrepreneurial spirit that’s quite a bit different. I think if you’re waiting for someone to sort of publish you, you’re going to be waiting a long time. And actually, that is what I’m seeing with a lot of friends that are writers and illustrators that unfortunately a lot of times now going through the traditional methods is extremely slow, like if you’ve got a manuscript, but today it would not be out for years.

Lisa: A lot of people that I have talked to do decide to go ahead and indie publish. And that’s even one of the reasons why I decided to indie published as well. Then a lot of those people are just talking about print books. Most a lot of novels are just print books. But when you come into something with a lot of illustrations and color drawings, that gets a little bit more complicated. Well, a lot more really does.

Christina: It Really does. I mean, obviously, especially for a picture book, that’s a lot of illustration and it is quite expensive when you’re publishing a book like that yourself, if you have to pay for illustration and editing. And there’s a lot of things. I did my own book Sketching Here & Everywhere, and I wanted it to be professionally edited and I wanted it to be professionally designed.

I can design, but designing a book like that, I didn’t have the experience of doing that type of book layout, and in my experience is more doing package design and some type design, but I don’t do much book layout. And so when I started this book, it was important for me to get a good editor and a good designer on it.

And I happened to be lucky in Cincinnati where I live, they used to have F+W. For people that may not know who F+W is if you’re not in to craft books and art books and that sort of thing, most of the books that you saw at Michael’s like on paper, crafts and patterns and how to draw and stuff were done by a company called F+W.

So North Light Publishing I think, is the name of some of the imprints and I forget they did a lot of watercolor books and that sort of thing. Well, they went under a couple of years ago, but a designer and an editor that used to work there, the designer is a freelance designer, so I hired her to do the layout for the book.

And then the editor I used, she’s actually on Reedsy. That’s not where I contacted her. She was suggested through people I was talking to that used to work there, but I feel like it really made it a much more professional package than if I tried to do that myself.

Kickstarter

Lisa: That’s great advice because I’ve heard other artists who’ve said, Oh, well, I know how to do the artwork. I can do the design layout as well. And, and then and other people who they say, Oh, well, I know how to work a computer. I’ll just published my book, but they haven’t gotten it edited and editing is so very important. But like you said, a lot of this is very expensive and I know that I actually connected with you because you’re helping a client of mine with her Kickstarter campaign. So I think you funded your own book through Kickstarter as well, is it correct?

Christina: Yes. This is the fourth Kickstarter I’ve been involved in. And the first two we decided to do a comic anthology in Cincinnati. And really Kickstarter has turned out to be a huge blessing to comics because it really is a way to build excitement about them and it’s a great way to get them funded. The way comics work in publishing is very different and really I think the rest of publishing is probably left behind a little bit by comics because comics has always been a little bit of an independent publishing scene.

Yes, you have Marvel and DC, but they’re like a very tiny part of what is comics. And so we funded those too. And then I also funded my book on sketching. And yes, it’s a great way to pay those costs because it’s expensive, not inexpensive to get an editor and a designer and that sort of thing if you want them done the way they would be done in a regular, traditional publishing workflow and it’s a great way also to build awareness of the book because the thing I love about Kickstarter and this is coming from the opinion of a gamer too, is they really have this wonderful ecosystem

If you come up with a board game there, you advertise it with a bunch of different blogs and websites that are really into board games and you get a lot of a following before you even do your board game. And I think publishing is now increasingly I just actually saw a friend kickstarting a book the other day and the book looked really great.

It was a really cool theme. I know she’s done a lot of stuff with traditional publishers. And I think right now what’s happening is a lot of the traditional publishers are simply tapped out. A lot of people that used to work at Random House or used to work at Penguin or Simon and Schuster are either becoming agents or becoming freelance editors or art directors because like every company, they’ve been sort of getting rid of all of the creatives and making it more of a contractor sort of workplace with a tiny skeleton crew.

That seems to be sort of I don’t know if it will reverse at some point. It’ll be interesting to see where everything falls. But I’m increasingly seeing more and more people using Kickstarters for children’s books. And, people listening to this obviously are interested in publishing, but I found this really great Facebook group that’s called Kickstarter for Authors. And most of the people there seem to be fantasy authors, but they have the best advice. They really study how to kickstart a book. And it really is a great place to go to get a lot of information that might be hard to find in one place anywhere else.

Lisa: That’s great. I’m sure a lot of people will love to have that that tip to go to that Facebook group. Any other advice for people, for authors that are wanting to get on Kickstarter?

Christina: Well, you know, obviously getting on a Facebook group like that. I mean, there’s tons of Facebook groups and some are more useful than others. I think the reason why this one has more usefulness is they really a lot of these authors really break down what worked, what didn’t you know, how much should you set the Kickstarter for. How much should the rewards be? What about video? Then they can also share resources for if you’re getting bookmarks done or if you’re getting stickers or pins or, whatever you need to do. I would recommend before you do a Kickstarter, do a ton of research and not just reading articles about Kickstarter, but actually go to the Kickstarter site and see what’s there and see what’s doing well, because that’s one of the most important aspects when you’re first setting it up.

You have to do a lot of groundwork before you do it and try to get enough people to. And we can follow your project before it starts and that includes getting mailing lists, PR, social media. PR If you can get some news stations locally to cover you, that’s always really great.

I think the thing that is probably hardest for people when they do a Kickstarter is that it’s relentless. You can’t just like plop a Kickstarter on the platform and then check on it in 30 days.

What about your book? Why don’t you give a pitch for your book?

Christina: The sketching book or Hadori? I’ll mention Hadori first and then I can circle back to Sketching Here & Everywhere. The thing I love about Shari’s books and I’ve worked with Shari before, I illustrated her book for the San Diego Zoo for their Centennial, which was their official children’s book. And it was really fun.

What she does with these this particular series of books, it has music with it. So she’s a musician and an actress, and she has a lot of experience in the arts beyond being a writer. And I love that it has sheet music in it. And the way she’s written the story has a very nice flow. It’s easy to follow story.

It’s a good one to read to kids, because it’s got a sound effect and that sort of thing. There’s a lot, I think, that sells it as a children’s book, and I think the series is really good. And I think Shari has worked really hard to get the word out there. So we’re pretty close to our goal now and I’m excited to see where it goes. Hopefully we’ll get to some of those stretch goals.

Lisa: One of the things I like when I looked at children’s book and your other illustrations, I really admire, coming from a writing point of view, you know, we have to get into characters and you really do that when you illustrate. I love the expressions that you put on faces. You have a real talent for putting expressions on faces. How do you do that?

Christina: A lot of practice. I think there’s a lot of intuition in illustration and when I’m painting animals, but when you’re painting anyone, you want it to have a lot of heart and you really want to pay attention to how you’re interpreting what people are getting from the reaction or action and I love painting animals because it’s like it’s sort of a fine line between being a little bit too caricature and being realistic.

My work is a little bit more realistic than a lot you see a lot of more, I want to say, stylized work. This has a lot of realism to it, but I try to make it not photorealistic. I try to give it a bit more. There’s a lot of caricature sort of imbued into the different animals, so it kind of starts crossing over very, very subtly into cartoon area.

You have to exaggerate enough to which I’ve always thought illustration done best is exaggerated. Obviously, if it’s not exaggerated at all, you would just use photos, but the thing that’s I always compare illustration, I always tell my students that when you’re doing illustration, you have to kind of think of it like opera, especially like when you’re thinking fantasy illustration.

But I think with children’s books there’s a bit of that too, where everything is bigger than life. And I think that’s always important no matter what you’re illustrating. And that’s why, you know, when you see a lot of, say, fantasy stuff or superheroes or science fiction artwork, it’s always the hair’s blowing back and they’re wearing these giant costumes and, and stuff.

It’s sort of got that big theatrical production. And, you know, you kind of try to have that even with a book on animals, you don’t want it. Like if things are too subtle, I think it makes it a little bit harder to tell what’s going on. And so that’s sort of I guess abbreviated way to approach it.

I do a lot of drawing just in general. I think if you want to get into illustration, you have to love drawing and putting together characters. And I like to draw almost anything. I’m a huge urban sketcher. I sketch at the zoo every month and will be sketching for a day at the Cincinnati Zoo.

And actually they have some of the most photogenic hippos at the Cincinnati Zoo. That when you look at pictures of hippos, like when I was putting this together, most of them are very scary looking. They have these big teeth and they look very aggressive. And the hippos, Fiona and Fritz at the Cincinnati Zoo and their mother, Bebe, have the sweetest expressions I think I’ve ever seen on a hippo.

I don’t know if you heard the story. She was a hippo that was born three years ago at the Cincinnati Zoo. And she has become world famous because she was a preemie. They didn’t think she was going to live. So she had to go to the children’s hospital and they saved her life and she’s used to being handled.

So she’s very friendly and is very reactive to people watching her that come to her tank. And so they absolutely love her. She swims, she plays, she kind of makes to the camera. You see all these wonderful videos of her. And then her brother Fritz was just born last year and he was sort of a surprise pregnancy and it’s terrible to be three and being usurped by someone cuter and younger but poor Fiona kind of is because now you have Fritz and he’s cuter and littler.

Lisa: Wow. That sounds like a children’s story in the making.

Christina: Many people have done children’s books already about Fiona. I’m sure Fritz is coming. He’s a little bit young. I’m sure there’s one’s coming. What is his name? I think it’s Richard Cowdrey has been doing a series of Fiona books that they have in the stores, and they’re really very charming.

Lisa: So when somebody comes to you with a story or a company comes to you with a story, how do you go about thinking about how you’re going to illustrate it?

Christina: It really depends what type of book it is. When someone first comes to me with a story and I’m happy to work with independent publishers, I have a pricing structure for how I get paid for my illustrations. And if people are willing to meet, and if I like the story, a lot of that depends too.

If the story is something I would actually want to illustrate. I get people contacting me almost every week asking me to do something. And so it’s nice to be able to kind of pick and choose the projects I want to do. And usually if it’s an animal book and particularly, I usually do a lot of research and that might mean sketching the animal and taking pictures of them.

Sometimes I’ve traveled places to do research. I did a book for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service. I think it was back in I think 2012 or 2010, I can’t remember. But anyway, I went out to Missoula, Montana, and met with the Elk team and learned a lot about Elk.

They actually gave me a textbook that was like two inches thick about elk was everything about elk you could ever imagine. And the author I had worked with on my Henry of the Patient Heron books, she had written that and she had to kind of distill this into a book for kids 8 to 12, and then it sort of was more informational.

So something like that. You’re doing more research. I went and met with somebody from the Elk Foundation and he took me on a drive through where they’re reintroducing Elk. And I took pictures of them there and got some great reference pictures. I did a book for Urban Armadale that was called Little Red Bat, and when the editor called me up and asked if I wanted to do it, I had never heard of them before because we’re more used to brown bats, but red bats are very ubiquitous throughout the Midwest, Cincinnati, Indiana, Ohio.

But you don’t ever hear about them because they don’t live in your house. People often get bats in their houses that are little brown bats that like live in your chimney or whatever, but red bats live in trees. And so most people aren’t aware of them. And so they’re so tiny and so hard to photograph. I ended up hooking up with a bat rescuer and he had rescued a family of red bats.

And so I was able to shoot video of them and took pictures of them since I was going to do a book that had 20 paintings of them. Obviously, you want to get them correct, especially the way I execute them. But even if you are doing them cartoony, it sort of helps to have good reference. And if it’s a story that’s more character driven, I’ll often do sketches of the characters and send them and we’ll kind of talk to the author, depending on the publisher.

A lot of big publishers don’t let you talk to the author. It really depends on how their set up is. Sometimes I’ve done artwork where I’ve never talked to or met the author.

Lisa: But I’m sure you do get approached by people, and sounds like you’re pretty busy so you probably don’t have time for many independent authors or people who are doing it themselves. But maybe you have other illustrators who get approached a lot, by indie authors who want to put out their own books. What kind of advice do you have for authors who want to find an illustrator?

Christina: I think the most important thing is to do your research. There actually is a document, and I’ll have to see if I can find a link. Somebody had done a document a couple of years ago about things to know when you’re contracting an illustrator. Because if you’ve never worked with an illustrator or contact contracted art before, it can be difficult because you don’t actually know.

You’re giving this person your manuscript and asking them to interpret it. And I think one of the best ways to prepare is to do some research, maybe even listen to podcasts, learn how artists work. I mean, usually now, especially if I’m working with independent authors. But actually I started doing this with Shari and I think it works really well.

You actually thumbnail the book first before you sit down and do very formal sketches to kind of get the flow of the book and figure out what’s in your mind, what’s in the author’s mind, what’s in the publisher’s mind, because it kind of gives you before you spend hours and hours. I think the biggest thing about illustration, even if it’s a fairly simple style that most authors don’t know, is just how much time it takes to do.

Illustrating a children’s book is kind of like running a marathon, and there is so much to think about.

You’re basically making a movie. So you have to think about the setting, what are the costumes, what do all the characters look like, what the animals look like, where do they live?

If it’s a book, specifically about an animal, what can I put in that environment that is actually in that environment? What kind of plants, what kind of trees? And, if it’s a character, you have to make sure the continuity is correct. A character has jewelry that she has to be wearing that in every picture.

So much that you have to think about when you’re doing the artwork. And so as an author, I think it’s good to be cognizant about all the efforts that it takes for an illustrator, because I think a lot of times all they all people see is the cost of how much it costs to commission an illustrator without realizing that, especially with an art style like mine, which takes a little bit longer.

It can take a couple months to finish the illustrations doing nothing else. And so if you extrapolate that out to, what you have to do to make a living, it’s not going to be something that’s going to be like 100 bucks or something like that, you know? And I think a lot of people don’t realize how much.

I went through the same thing just recently when I was getting editors, you know, getting my editor and designer. I didn’t know how much it cost to do that, and it cost quite a bit more than I thought. But then I was kind of like, Well, what do I do about how long it takes to do this stuff?
I have never edited a book before, and this is a book that had particularly a lot to edit. And I think part of it is being educated on how to communicate with them, how to let them execute their artistic vision without hovering too much, but getting what you want. It’s teamwork between whoever’s commissioning the art and the artist.

And it’s interesting because publishers for a long time, and I don’t know if this is changing, but most of the time, unless you’re some sort of well-known person, you have no say in the art at all. I understand in a way, why they do that. But I’ve known a lot of people that have been just dissatisfied.

That’s one good thing about indie publishing, too, is you can commission an artist that you want and get the style you want and that sort of thing.

Lisa: A lot of this you’re talking about with illustrators kind of correlates to the last interview I did with a audiobook narrator and a cool thing where you don’t realize, oh, you think, oh, somebody else is going to read your book. Well, they have to do their preparation. Like the illustrator does their research and their prep work.

A narrator has to do their prep work and their research. And it’s not just reading, it’s getting into the characters and getting it right. And with publishers, a lot of publishers won’t let the authors choose their narrator. And like a client of mine had his book with a hybrid publisher. And so the hybrid publisher picked some narrators for him to listen to. And so he could kind of have a say in it. And other publishers, I think, let you submit your own audition so they can see if maybe you can do your own narration and they let you have a little bit of a say in it, at least.

Christina: That’s an interesting angle. It’s interesting that you mention that because on my podcast that I do for my Patreon, I recently interviewed someone, she’s an illustrator, but she also writes novels, and she was getting an audiobook of one of her books and she is doing it through Audible and she had six three auditions to go through.

I know that sounded very overwhelming to me. And she said it was really hard. It was like picking out a portfolio or something like that. It was something that, like you said, you don’t really give that much thought to. But talking about the way the industry has changed, I very rarely read novels anymore. I mostly listen to them on Audible. And sometimes the reader can make a huge difference.

Lisa: Yes, definitely. I’ve been listening for quite a while myself. Do you want to tell us about your podcasts?

Christina: Oh yeah, I have two podcasts. The first one is called Hometown Haunts, and I did that with my friends Jennifer Koehler and Kat Klockow, which Kat who used to be on a paranormal radio show, and she edits the comic series that we first kickstarted and she’s sort of the expert on everything paranormal.

And Jen and I sort of are color commentary sort of. She does all the research. It’s kind of like she writes a research paper each week and then we discuss it. And a lot of it focuses on regional Cincinnati, Indiana, Kentucky history, a little bit of true crime, cryptids and that sort of thing. And that’s just a lot of fun.

It’s sort of a way to keep talking about the comic because they’re actually putting together the third issue right now and keep it on people’s radar, even when it’s not coming out at that moment.

And I started a podcast called Sketchy Talk for my Patreon because I love talking to other artists and discussing, sketching practice and art practice. And it was a nice way to add something to my Patreon that didn’t require as much artwork for me because I tend to get really, really booked and have commitments to like 20, 25 at the moment. And that’s actually why I got into urban sketching because I love to sketch just for me and it’s a way to keep me really excited about drawing.

I think it’s always important as a creator to not just do stuff for other people, but you have to do stuff for yourself too.

Is that what your book is about?

Christina: That’s what Sketching Here & Everywhere is about. Yes, it talks about how I came to urban sketching and keeping sketchbooks in general. And I have exercises for people to sort of learn how to get into sketching and, you know, sketching like lot of pursuits, music or if you want to do dance or whatever, especially with the sort of gig economy that’s come up.

You’re not encouraged to do something just for the joy of doing it. And the thing I love about sort of the urban sketching movement is it doesn’t matter how good you are. Drawing the whole thing is the act of observing and being outside. And there’s so there’s so much more to it than just doing artwork.

And the book kind of tells you how to get into that. And I’ve always liked the manifesto of urban Sketchers, which is sort of to encourage you, no matter what your skill level is, to go out and draw because, you know, before everybody had a cell camera. So, you know, people actually used to keep journals and used to keep and I’m not saying people don’t do that anymore, but it was probably more common practice because like a lot of scientists, when they’d go, they do field guides and field journals and that sort of thing.

And when you observe something, whether it’s a building or a butterfly or an insect across your path and you decide to sketch it, you observe it and remember it a lot better than if you snapped a picture of it. And so I think that practice is helpful to a lot of people, and it’s very analogous to if people are into music or if people are into dance.

Like if you keep this just for yourself, like you don’t have to do it as a professional pursuit, you can do it because it’s something you love to do, like doing puzzles or, you know, it’s a creative pursuit that is more enriching for your soul than to just do something because you’re willing to be compensated for it.

Lisa: So along that line, do you have any advice for young people or people of any age actually who want to break in as an illustrator?

Christina: Yes, I think that if you want to be an illustrator, the most important advice I can give somebody is draw the stuff you want to draw. And also don’t expect people to hire you to do work based on something you want to do. But it’s not in your portfolio. It seems like a lot of people when they get started, they say, Oh, I want to do movie posters for this or I want to do book covers.

But then in their portfolio they have nothing in their that relates to what they say they want to do. So because of the Internet, any art director has thousands of choices of people they can hire. And so if they’re wanting to do a book cover with a tiger on it, they’re going to pick people that have painted tigers that they like and commission them to do that.

If all you have in your portfolio is pictures of kites or pictures of whatever have if it’s not what they’re looking for, they’re not going to hire you. So I highly recommend you put what you like to draw in your portfolio. We used to always have a saying like if you don’t like to draw cars or bicycles, don’t put them in your portfolio because people will hire you to draw them in.

If it’s something you don’t want to draw, don’t do that. Literally, you will get hired to do books based on something that you have in your portfolio. Because what happens is when somebody is finding someone to do their book, they fall in love with a piece that this illustrator has done, and they want that for their book.

So if you’re doing artwork because you want to tick off boxes and say, Oh, I heard if you draw X, Y and Z and you know a lot and I know this kind of probably flies in the face a little bit of a lot of advice people get at conferences and stuff and I understand where they’re coming from.

The problem is, is that you want to create your best work and you want to get work doing what you want to do. And if you do work, that’s what you think is a better fact. There’s a Venn diagram Ialways show my students, and it has the crossover. What people say should be in a portfolio, what you have in your portfolio then you know what you want to do.

It’s like a whole totally different circle that’s not intersecting. And so I think that you have, especially today, if there’s a passion that you have, you can make a book about it without having to go through anyone. And I think that’s kind of exciting and it’s also kind of daunting, too, because it’s, again, a very transitional phase because it used to be when you started an illustration, it was much more and when to use the word transactional, but it was probably a lot more clear cut, how you got work and how you approached people.

And you know, you used to drop your portfolio off. You could go and actually still do portfolio drop offs. But you know it publishers in New York but now with the Internet how people find your work, it’s a whole different sort of random way that you are connected to people that want to publish your work.

And sometimes as you know, publishing your own stuff is a road to getting the type of work that you want. I mean, I would say if you’re breaking in, don’t get frustrated and keep at it. Do the work that you want. You know, start thinking about if you want to do children’s books, start doing artwork that’s sequential for one thing, that tell stories, you know.

And actually, that’s a great way to familiarize yourself with what this type of assignment is, because obviously doing a picture book or a comic is a very different project from if you’re just doing a magazine cover or a piece of spot art for something and knowing how much work it is for each project is useful to when you’re getting started.

Lisa: Yeah. That’s actually an interesting concept. It might be if maybe there’s a children’s book that that you find that you like the children’s book but you don’t like the illustrations, well, do your own illustrations. It’s kind of an example of how you can illustrate. Yes. What great advice this is been just so interesting. And I really encourage people to check out your website and look at your beautiful illustrations. What is your website?

Christina: christinawald.com. So it’s really easy.

Lisa: Yes, it is. Well, thank you so much. This has been delightful.