Realistic vs Stylized
Learning from reference photos.
I submitted the next round of sketches to my editor, for my picture book Santiago and Great Bear. While I can’t show pages from the book until a few months before the release in 2026, I thought that it would be fun to talk about my character Great Bear, and how I researched all bears, specifically black bears, and then used those reference photos to create stylized illustrations of my character.
Unsplash.com is a great resource for royalty free images but the website doesn’t have a huge selection for free. Like anything else, you have to upgrade for the goods. I like to create a Pinterest board with images that I loosely work from. You can find my Pinterest board with black bears here. But if you ever need a reference for a more photo realistic drawing, you can work from photos on unsplash.com without worrying about infringing on copyright. You just want to make sure to give a nod to the photographer and credit their work.
So what is stylized? Stylized illustration is an art form that creates a unique style of a subject, rather than trying to depict it realistically. Stylized illustrations often use simplified shapes, exaggerated features and/or bold colors that you might not see in real life. The goal is to emphasize expression and communicate themes. Have you ever heard of an illustrator refer to their method of drawing as their “style” of drawing? My character Great Bear is a constellation, so naturally he would be the color of the sky, not a black bear
Let’s go back to the beginning of the process. I like to start by drawing realistic sketches of the animal in different poses. Great Bear is a constellation, specifically Ursa Major or The Great Bear, so I did a little research on bears. I chose the black bear because they are the world’s most common bear, and they are smaller than other bears in North America (where Santiago lives), which might make them less intimidating. Please note that you should never ever approach a black bear in real life. Ok, PSA done. In my book, Great Bear is still much larger in proportion to Santiago, but with stylized features; rounded ears, softer nose and glowing stars. Once I’m comfortable with the shapes of the animal that I’m drawing (in this case black bears), I can start to draw stylized sketches.
My latest art tutorial on YouTube details my process. I use the Procreate App and my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil but you can also do this exercise on paper with a 6B pencil and eraser. If you like the video and want to see more drawings of a particular animal (or animals), please make a suggestion. Feel free to comment on this post. I love requests! As always, thank you for reading.