Skip to content

Portfolio
Licensing
- Full Collections
- Greeting Cards
About
Contact

Portfolio
Licensing
- Full Collections
- Greeting Cards
About
Contact

Search

Day: January 31, 2016

LAND of CLE week 4 Wrap-Up

September 19, 2017January 31, 2016

Vikings, elephant astronaut, chefs, sloth, dinosaur, and woolly mammoth–this week nearly had it all! I can’t believe #LANDofCLE is almost … Read more

Categories Illustrations, Land of Cle, Sketches & Doodles

Find me on Instagram

joshcleland

2,049 55,948

Children’s book illustrator / educator
Rep’d by @advocateart01
Inquiries: Josh@clelandillustration.com
Join my course waiting list 👇👇👇

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Sep 7

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18094949219105204

I’ll be at Rose City Comic Con this weekend. If you’re visiting come say hi! I’ll be in the Rose City Jr. section room 203. I’ll also be doing a fun drawing lesson with the kiddos Saturday afternoon. Hope to see you there! @rosecitycc

70 0

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Sep 6

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18107770928178864

Last chance to get in on the action! Enrollment for my three courses closes this evening. The three courses available are:

-Character Design for Kid’s Books
-Illustrating a Children’s Book
-Mini-course: Illustrating Silly Monsters in Procreate

You can purchase all three at once as a bundle, or pick and choose.

You’ll learn character design, visual storytelling, and the full children’s book illustration process—step by step, at your own pace.

Enrollment closes Today, Sunday at 9pm PDT, so don’t wait. Click the link in my bio for more info and purchase instructions.

See you in the course!

29 1

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Sep 6

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18115757755986433

Enrollment is closing soon for all three of my courses:

-Character Design for Kid’s Books
-Illustrating a Children’s Book
-Mini-course: Illustrating Silly Monsters in Procreate

Enrollment is open for a limited time. You can purchase all three at once as a bundle, or pick and choose.

You’ll learn character design, visual storytelling, and the full children’s book illustration process—step by step, at your own pace.

Enrollment closes on Sunday at 9pm PDT, so don’t wait. Click the link in my bio for more info and purchase instructions.

See you in the course!

53 2

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Sep 5

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18084158015695258

Shape language reveals a lot about your character. Oval shapes tend to represent friendly, approachable characters, while triangles and angles tend to represent villainous characters. You can also mix shapes to provide subtle foreshadowing. For instance, if your character is a mean jerk at the start of the story, but then learns to be nice at the end, you may have a sharp head shape, but big, round soft eyes, and maybe a soft body shape.

For more tips like this join one of my courses on character design and children’s books. Enrollment is open for a limited time. Link is in my bio. See you there!

75 1

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Sep 4

Open post by joshcleland with ID 17874029910565912

Character design tip: Before drawing your character, draw out a single motion line. This line will serve as your “line of action”. Basing your character’s movement on this line helps simplify the drawing and makes it much more cohesive and fun! Give it a try. Don’t worry if it feels a little bit unnatural at first. In fact, I have to continually remind myself to use this tip. But when I do, I’m much more happy with the end result.

Want more tips and tricks like this? I have a few courses now open for registration for a limited time. All three courses center around character design and children’s books. You can find more info through the link in my bio. See you there!

147 2

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Sep 3

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18113397340797793

Enrollment is now open, and I’d love to welcome you in!
Registrations for my courses on character design and children’s book illustration are now open! These were created to help you develop strong, consistent artwork from idea to finished pages.

I’ll teach you how to:

Design expressive, repeatable characters for children’s books

Illustrate full scenes that support storytelling

Create clean, professional-looking artwork step by step

This is not about shortcuts or trends. It’s about building real skills you can use again and again. If your goal is to illustrate with more confidence and clarity, this is the place to start!

Enroll now and start building your children’s book portfolio! Link is in my bio.

194 4

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Aug 24

Open post by joshcleland with ID 17944119306317728

After a week of vacation I’m back in the studio. Lots of stuff coming up! Can’t wait to share more! The artwork on my screen is Santa In Disguise, written by @cynthiaplattbooks and published by @harperkids . Pre-orders available now. Link in my bio.

#kidlitartist #kidlitillustration #childrensbooks

376 16

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Aug 12

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18085703834227241

Found some framed prints I did over 10 years ago. I think they still make a nice addition to the studio.

#kidlitartist #kidlitillustration #workspace

274 13

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jul 29

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18044844395601527

Drawing a forest scene. More to come. 😊

#kidlitartist #kidlitart #characterdesign #workspace

615 17

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jul 27

Open post by joshcleland with ID 17971629036094685

I’ll be holding another free character design workshop this Wednesday, July 29 at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern. All you need is something to draw with (pencil/paper, iPad, etc…) and your imagination. Registration link in my bio. Hope to see you there!

154 13

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jul 20

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18005899913968157

I finally got around to drawing Jimothy. Question: was Jimothy named from an episode of The Office?

#jimothy #kidlitart #characterdesign #jimothyart

598 24

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jul 17

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18022618286814752

Morning warmup doodles 😊.

#kidlitart #kidlitartist #characterdesign #childrensbooks

1403 28

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jul 13

Open post by joshcleland with ID 17898813123340209

Some artwork I did last Fall for a possible book. In the end the publisher went in a different direction, which is the way it goes sometimes. Oh well.

#kidlitartist #kidlitillustration

788 22

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jul 3

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18458014315117337

A little board book I illustrated recently. Like many of you, I’m feeling quite melancholy this 4th of July. But I do love this country, and remain hopeful that we will see better days. Plus, we have really good ice cream. 😊 Happy 4th of July! Published by @simonandschuster

160 8

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jun 30

Open post by joshcleland with ID 17934460059320746

#JuneCharacterADay day 30: Lemur helping someone. It’s the final day!!! Congratulations to everyone who participated 🎉🎈🎂 I hope you had fun and created some characters that you’re proud of. Remember, you can always go back and revise the characters that you like, and explore them further. I’ll be doing that for a few of these.

363 30

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jun 29

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18089531411290012

#JuneCharacterADay day 29: Lion eating ice cream. Just one more day to go!!!

184 3

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jun 28

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18071511065370451

#JuneCharacterADay day 28: Gorilla riding a tricycle. It’s the last couple of days. Let’s finish strong 💪!

305 9

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jun 27

Open post by joshcleland with ID 18071132993368816

#JuneCharacterADay day 27: Chameleon marching in a parade. I can’t believe there’s only a few days left! It’s been amazing seeing everyone’s fun characters. It’ll be sad when it’s over.

199 5

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jun 26

Open post by joshcleland with ID 17954607162172819

#JuneCharacterADay day 26: Wildebeest flying with balloons. I think this may be a good start to a birthday card 😊.

211 3

View Instagram post by joshcleland

Jun 25

Open post by joshcleland with ID 17974663914104088

#JuneCharacterADay day 25: Anteater tap-dancing. Unfortunately I haven’t had a lot of time this week to work on these due to upcoming deadlines, but doing my best 😊.

258 9

Follow on Instagram

Facebook-f X-twitter Instagram Behance Linkedin-in Envelope

josh@clelandillustration.com
971-205-2283
Represented by Advocate Art

Subscribe to the newsletter

Stay up to date on the latest news, releases, and artwork.

First name

Last name

Email

Copyright 2026 © by Josh Cleland or respective clients. All rights reserved.