faded

for Illustration Friday:

I figure I might as well submit this piece that I blogged about the other day… which means featuring it in its own post.

My Very Own Illustration Friday

Has anyone participated in illustration friday? It’s a site that offers a weekly prompt for illustrators who then have a week to create a piece. There is a featured piece chosen for each round of submissions. Check it out.

I set aside some quality time at my art table today, but without a firm idea of what I wanted to work on. So I checked illustration friday for a prompt and came back with “faded.”

Faded made me think of old jeans, worn soft from years of wearing. (This made me wonder- when was the last time I wore jeans? The memory of jeans is fading and is replaced by maternity pants that I have to pull up every two minutes.) So I came up with this little drawing.

I was also excited to try out some recently purchased gouache. The bold colors make me happy!

And lastly, I’ve been thinking about ideas for a mural drawing on the wall of the baby’s room. Here is one idea that I don’t plan on using, but I still like. The bear is blatantly copied- does anyone know where from?

Happy long weekend everyone!

five books and a baby

I don’t think I ever announced my pregnancy to the blogosphere, but it’s true. I’m due in July. Here is a picture to confirm this craziness:

I’m standing in my studio that’s being slowly converted into a nursery.

Anyhow, Chris and I had some of our favorite Chicagoans visiting the other weekend and they surprised us with the most amazing gift: a little kids’ backpack in the shape of an owl, filled with board books! Each one is such a treasure- a few old favorites, a few that are becoming new classics, and one that is delicious. See if you can guess which is which:

        

I’ve been reading these to the baby (talk about a captive audience) and I’m getting some good kicks in response. He or She especially seems to like Harry the Dirty Dog, in which Harry starts off as a white dog with black spots, but after a day of playing in the dirt and sliding down the coal shoot, he becomes a black dog with white spots. It’s a simple, funny, sweet story. I think baby already has good taste in picture books.

a conference summed up in lists

My favorite things from the SCBWI conference:

• My consultation with Lucy Ruth Cummins, an art director at Simon and Schuster. She was truly excited about my work and she gave me all kinds of useful suggestions!
• Getting a peek into Melissa Sweet‘s artistic process (and studio, via video!). She works so passionately and thoroughly on her artwork- her collage is pure play and her watercolors are exceptionally rich. Carmine: A Little More Red is now on my list of books to study (see below).
• Andrea Welch from Beach Lane Books shared ten questions she asks when considering a picture book, such as “Is the project emotionally engaging?” or “Does the story meet a developmental need?” Speaking of emotion, I teared up at her mere description of William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. What a great story.

Things I heard that stuck:

• “If I were to hang this on my wall, what would I want it to look like?” – Melissa Sweet
• “The creative muse likes rhythmic activities: walking, music, chopping vegetables…” – Bonny Becker
• “I figured they’d have reject toys at the Monster Academy.” – Scott Magoon

Picture books I can’t wait to check out:

• The Boy and the Airplane (I don’t think it’s been released yet, but it came SO highly recommended that I’ll be keeping my eye out for this)
• Carmine: A Little More Red, by Melissa Sweet
• The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, by Hildegarde H. Swift (what a name!)
• Ugly Fish, by Kara Lareau, illustrated by Scott Magoon
• Winter is the Warmest Season, by Lauren Stringer
• and since I can’t resist young adult either, the Chaos Walking trilogy, by Patrick Ness

the conference is acoming

It is about a week until the annual SCBWI Western Washington conference, which means I’ve been working less on actual illustrations and more on constructing my portfolio.

This has meant troubleshooting seemingly small issues, such as how to keep everything landscape oriented so that viewers don’t have to turn the portfolio back and forth… or debating whether I should choose a piece that I love but copies poorly, or a piece that is so so, but looks good when it’s reproduced.

You can see that I’ve chosen to split a lot of images to make them fit the way I want, which creates a gutter like a picture book, but it also creates an empty space to one side of the image.  Altogether it might not be the most professional looking presentation, but if it looked too slick it wouldn’t be a great reflection of me and my work anyway.

Next on my list is updating my website and other online presences, then researching all the big names, publishers and agents who will be there. Really good times when it’s finally sunny outside!

jellyfish gazing

I’ve been working on this piece sloooowly for a few weeks now in order to have a black and white piece ready for the SCBWI conference in April. Turns out April is right around the corner. How did that happen?

Here We Go… again… and again

Here are three drafts of the crowd piece from Here We Go. I don’t usually redo my work this many times, but this piece is an important one- a wordless spread that is at the climax of the book.

I didn’t even finish this first one because of issues with the ink I was using.

This second try looks good in color copies and especially on the computer screen…

but this last version is my favorite in terms of composition and it’s consistency with the other artwork for the book.

color and critters

I dug up some markers from a hidden basement corner, thinking it might be fun to play around with them. And indeed, color is fun!

    

There is very little pressure to get an image right when you are working with crappy crayola markers on scraps of paper. I think my animal mindedness of late is coming from the blog Animalarium. It’s all animal illustrations, all the time, from all around the world. Definitely worth a peek.

two happy recommendations

My friend Brendan (who happens to be an amazing artist and animator) recommended the following web comic by Ryan Andrews. It’s called Sarah and the Seed.

http://www.ryan-a.com/comics/sarahandtheseed01.htm

A web comic? that sounds… ok. But wouldn’t I rather read a graphic novel? It turns out that this short story is lovely on the web. The drawings are fantastic and each page is like it’s own chapter. I was unexpectedly drawn in until the last click. So thanks, Brendan!

Around the same time I heard from another friend, Eboni (who happens to be a writer of a children’s story of her own), and she mentioned a children’s book called When the Sky is Like Lace by Elinor Lander Horwitz and illustrated by Barbara Cooney.

Wow. I immediately connected with the text, which is lyrical and charmingly random (…at the midnight end of the garden) (the grass is like gooseberry jam) (the thing to eat is spaghetti with pineapple sauce),  and the illustrations! The pallet, the sense of place, the characters, everything appealed to me. Here is an illustration from the book juxtaposed with one of my illustrations from Snail Joy.

  

I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this book before. You would think that I had grown up with it! So thank you, Eboni!

I Want My Hat Back

This is my first picture book purchase in months, but it’s a good one!

I Want My Hat Back, by Jon Klassen is extremely simple and funny. I immediately thought of the humor and design of a Mo Willems book (and I have to admit to being rather tired of Mo Willems) but the illustrations make this book fresh and satisfying. Each character is simple in shape and color, yet their non-expressions, that vary with just a shift or widening of an eye, contribute to a rather hilarious ending.