A visit with a literary agent, thanks Mark!

Mark Mitchell of Marks and Splashes had a great interview with Kelly Sonnack from Andrea Brown Literary Agency. It was a great interview, absolutely worth listening to. Kelly talks about what Agents are looking for in a portfolio, the kinds of books that she represents at Andrea Brown, etc...

In the show notes I happened upon the link to a blog, "Simply Messing About" of 4 illustrators whose journey I love to read about.

Marla Frazee

One of my favorite author/illustrators of all time is Marla Frazee. Her illustrations are amazing, and the books that she has been a part of have a depth to them that I admire.

It's always a gift to be able to gain some insight into someone you admire. Tonight I came across this short documentary on Marla Frazee, perhaps you'll love it too...

sketchbook journaling

I have been captivated for a long time with the idea of really diving into my sketchbook and having fun. But honestly, I keep hesitating...is it 'the art of fear'? Maybe...I have a hard time just letting go. But I see so many benefits to art journalling, it's something I really want to do. So I am going to sign up and take some e-classes to hopeful get me going and loosen up.

Here are some classes that look intriguing, you may find them appealing too.


Firstly, I love Koosje Koene and her gentle encouragement and enthusiasm. She has a YouTube channel full of exercises -

Then I discovered Lisa Congdon and others on Creativebug -
https://www.creativebug.com/classseries/sketchbook-explorations
https://www.creativebug.com/classseries/creative-sketchbooking
https://www.creativebug.com/classseries/art-journaling-with-dawn-sokol

Lastly, I do love this book by Danny Gregory, "An Illustrated Life". Interestingly, Danny and Koosje have paired up to start Sketchbook Skool, which is also fantastic and have classes which inspire you to jump into your sketchbooks and play.

wisdom from Jon Burgerman

I just watched this short clip of John Burgerman. It's fantastic, at 2:56  he offers great wisdom for life as he speaks about the mental well being that comes from allowing oneself to let go, to play and to create.

12x12

This year in addition to working on my illustrations, I am keen to start writing a little more.

To keep myself accountable and moving forward I signed up for Julie Hedlund's 12x12 Challenge. It's such a great group of writers - so encouraging and motivated! So here I go, with plans on writing 12 stories this year.

#kidlitart28 day challenge is underway!

The #kidlitart28 day challenge began yesterday. So through the month of February I'll be trying to post a sketch everyday on Instagram and on my blog.

These challenges are always great at encouraging me to be consistent. The best part, is that there's always improvement when one is drawing every day.

Manga Hair

I am so excited to have the opportunity to be a candidate to illustrate a book by a published author. I am working on two spreads that will act as my 'test' so see if my style fits, etc...

I am really happy with the compositions that I've settled on, I just have to finish the actual painting. I am still toying with the hair...for some reason the hair styles I've chosen don't seem to be quite right for the characters, but I have just come across two sheets of manga hair online that have given me some better ideas....

Joh Klassen

Such a great little clip by John Klassen on his creation of a character and giving them emotion.

I can't say how much I love this post...

It's PiBoIdMo as well this month. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate the honest in Karen Henry Clark's post here. And I have always loved "Sweet Baby Moon" since I first saw Patrice Barton's sketches.

It's SkADaMo!

I love this challenge! Thanks Linda Silvertri for getting us going each year.  Follow participants by searching #SkADaMo

Color

On to my second skillshare class with Brad Woodward ...this time we are talking about color.

Did you know that Adobe has a crazy colorwheel web page you can play around with to create color palettes??  Never saw this before. It is wild!

There is also a neat and quick tutorial on color palettes here.

Apparently these are great books that I need to look into...one on pantones and one on modern design and  color.

sketching and creativity

I started a really interesting Skillshare class by Brad Woodward today. He included some great references related to his class. I hope it's okay to make a record of them here so I can go back to them.

Firstly - a neat video on creativity. It's posted on Brad's blog, which is another wonderful reference by the way.  Along with this link were others that took me to a neat post on sketching, a post on sketching as a visual power tool, and a post on Inspiration vs. Imitation.

It's a great class so far, I'm really looking forward to it. Check it out at Skillshare.

**Please note this image was created by Brad Woodward, copied from his blog post here.

number five bus

So how cool is it to be a fly on the wall to an email conversation between two (or three) bookmakers?  So cool right?!  It almost sounds too good to be true, but no - check out number five bus where Phil and Erin Stead do just that!

experimenting

I have been reading a really neat interview between Matt Cordell and Phil Stead.  In it, Matt talks about his exploration of materials and line quality.  I have found it a fascinating read.

They have written/illustrated a children's book together - definitely one to check out!

"Line quality and line character has been my thing as an illustrator from day one. And it’s been a huge learning curve. Still is. I’m very hard on myself about it. Trying to figure out what kind of line I want, how to get to that line, and being satisfied with what I end up with. I’ve played around with some other things too. For one book, Gone Fishing, I used about 10 different sharpies, all of which were in varying states of drying up. I used a different sharpie for different parts of a drawing, depending on the relationship I had with that sharpie. I started out doing this, just to get a feel for sketching with a heavier line, because I knew the end result was going to be a heavy line. But then I liked what was happening with these sharpies, so I used my sketches as my final line (with a tiny bit of photoshop doctoring)."

creating a picture book dummy

So I have a few things on the go...but everything working toward my picture book. It's such a fun project. I love the idea, the story still needs some tweaking, as do my storyboards, but all in all I'm feeling really excited about the project.


I have just started taking yet another class from my favorite duo - Will Terry and Jake Paker and their amazing School of Visual Storytelling. It's a composition class and has me thinking about thumbnails and compositional sketches and how I may need to tweak the sketches I have already done.

In the first class Jake was talking about how he frst creates boxes the size of his final drawings in Photoshop and then transforms them into small thumbnails of the same proportions to work on as he plays with his ideas. He'll often add text to the bottom of each frame so he has everything all together.

That lead me to think about what the final size of my page should be and I came across this great blog post which to summarized suggested sticking close to an 8x10 page which is most common.

Now in an earlier class,  Jake Parker explained that he works on a 8.5x11 page or  17x11 for a full page spread at 300 dpi. When he shrinks down his thumbnails, they are around 2x4.  Next he enlarges his thumbnails to double the size and does more refined sketches. These are the sketches he would send to the editor in a .pdf at about 150 dpi.

So I'm off to tweak my current thumbnails and work on some larger compositional sketches .

Art books

I love looking and reading through the art books of animated movies - looking at the environmental and character designs, the storyboards etc...But they aren't cheap and not always available at my local library. In case you are a fan too, you may want to check out the Parka blog, where tons of art books are reviewed, with images and a video of the pages being flipped through, so you at least get a glimpse of the book before paying $30-$50.

Take your time - Woulter Tulp

Last week I was listening to a Chris Oatley podcast with illustrator Wouter Tulp. It was the second time I had listened to the podcast and loved it even more. Wouter Tulp had such insightful comments to share. This morning I turned to his blog and read his comments on art and the internet entitled "Take your time". It's a great read. One that no doubt I'll turn to and read a second time.

(Illustration by Wouter Tulp)

loving #kidlitart tweet chats

If you are an illustrator...new or experienced, and you aren't tuning into the #kidlitart tweet chats Thursday evenings at 7MST you are missing out!!

I love the community of illustrators that participates and shares their knowledge and encouragement.

A couple weeks ago as we were discussing character design, three fantastic websites were shared that I need to post here so I can keep track of them....

First - the Living Lines Library, filled with sketches of characters we all love and the quality of design we'd all like to be able to produce.

Next, Figure and Gesture Drawing, a website full of reference for facial expressions and gestures.

And lastly, an article about Photoshop Etiquette which I am sure I need to read.

Lastly, if you want to check out the tweet chat transcript on character design, you can find it here.

Enjoy!

postcard boost

Tonight during our weekly tweet chat for #kidlitart we have been assigned to post a mock-up of a postcard promo - such a great idea!  So here is my submission for tonight's crit.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's designs!

setting realistic goals to improve as an illustrator

My husband is not into 'New Year's Resolutions', but I LOVE them! I love evaluating the past year, what I accomplished, what I wished I had accomplished but didn't, and I really love thinking about the upcoming year and what I can tweak to become better....in all facets of life. But this year I have some lofty goals to take me further down this road of illustration.


Tonight I came across this great post on "Once Upon a Sketch" where Jennifer Zivoin shares some GREAT wisdom on setting realistic goals as we seek to improve both our abilities and our business.