Cowboy Jim
A vibrant watercolor-illustrated children’s book project featuring a playful cowboy adventure.
Author : Allie Davis
Illustrator : Disha Sharma
Cowboy Jim is a children’s picture book project illustrated in watercolor. I created the artwork with a focus on expressive characters, vibrant color, and a warm, playful atmosphere suited to young readers.
Every picture book begins with a story, but somewhere between the words on the page and the finished book, there is a whole world that has to be imagined.
Cowboy Jim was one of those projects where I had the opportunity to step into that world and figure out how the story could come alive visually.
Behind the Scenes
Finding the Visual Language
Before creating the final illustrations, I explored the characters, environments, expressions, and overall visual direction. For a picture book, consistency is especially important. The characters need to feel like the same characters whether they are running across a page, sitting quietly, or caught in a completely different scene.
I worked through sketches and studies to establish the look and personality of Cowboy Jim and the world around him.
From Sketches to Paint
Once the compositions were working, I moved into the painting stage.
My approach was to keep the illustrations expressive and organic, allowing the texture and movement of the medium to remain visible rather than making everything feel overly polished or digital.
Color became an important part of the storytelling too. I considered how the palette could help establish the atmosphere of each scene while still keeping the book visually cohesive as a whole.
Thinking Beyond Individual Illustrations
One of the things I love about illustrating a picture book is that you aren't simply creating a collection of separate images.
You are creating a visual journey.
A character's position on the page, the direction they are looking, the amount of space around them, and even the transition from one spread to the next can affect how a reader experiences the story.
For Cowboy Jim, I thought about these relationships throughout the process—how one illustration leads into another and how the artwork can support the rhythm of the words without competing with them.
A Look Behind the Scenes
The finished illustration is only one part of the process. Behind it are sketches, composition studies, character explorations, color decisions, revisions, and plenty of moments where something needs to be reworked before it feels right.
That's what I enjoy about illustration: the process of gradually discovering the image that belongs to the story.
Cowboy Jim gave me the opportunity to explore that process from the first sketch to the final artwork, and I'm excited to share a little of that journey here.
