#PBDummy Challenge - Step Five: Render Tight, Full-Sized Sketches

Today we start step five of the Picture Book Dummy Challenge.  I feel like this is the point of the challenge where things get serious....and I guess it is. These are the drawings that are going to make up our #PBDummy. There are 8 weeks for this step. Last year, somewhere during those 8 weeks I lost my mojo and didn't make to step six. This year I am bound and determined to keep up and make it through.

How is everyone else doing on the challenge? Let us know in the comments below or tell us about your progress on our facebook page.

As with the previous steps I encourage you to read the step five post from last year's challenge at the kidlitart blog where Bonnie Adamson gives some great links to resources that will help us through this phase of the challenge.

If you would like to learn more about the 2013 #PBDummy Challenge you can learn all the details here. 

And please check out our participants here.

#PBDummy Challenge Step four - half way mark

Half-way through step four and I have a rough storyboard down. I am sure I'll spend some more time tweaking it this week, but I'm feeling pretty good about the majority of the pages. This morning I spent some time going through the spreads, making sure that my compositions left enough room for the text.

Here is a snap shot of what I've accomplished thus far - my story is written, my characters are coming along and my storyboard is nearing completion. It's pretty amazing, when one lays everything out, to see all the work we have done in just a couple of months.

For some more inspiration, please check out last year's post by Julian Hector at the kidlitart blog.

Here are the other participants in this year's #PBDummy Challenge.

An evening of fun and inspiration

Every once in a while if we put ourselves out there we encounter amazing opportunities to grow and to be inspired.

A number of months ago I was surfing the web, reading blogs of successful local illustrators. I came across this photo - it's a picture of the first inaugural 'sketch club' at Mike Kerr and Renata Liwska's new art studio, whose name is "sketch club" - how cool is that?   In attendance at this inaugural sketch club evening were five illustrators, Renata and Mike along with Carolyn Fisher, Jacqueline Hudon-Verrelli and Byron Eggenschwiler - all of them successful illustrators.  Additionally, Renata, Carolyn and Jacqueline are published children's book illustrators. I had crossed paths  previously with many of these fine artists- Carolyn and Jacqueline were former instructors of mine at ACAD years ago and Renata and Mike were guest speakers during those classes.  So, when I saw this image I couldn't help think to myself, "How does one get invited to a sketch club night??!!"

Apparently, all one must do is ask. I later summoned the courage to email Mike and express my interest in attending a sketch club night and guess what? Last week I got an invite.

What a fun evening! I was certainly out of my element being an amateur among these professional illustrators, but they were all so welcoming and encouraging. It was a similar group to the first sketch club - Renata, Mike, Carolyn and Byron. We sketched for 3 1/2 hours until I had numb bum (there is some physical training involved in drawing for hours, who knew?) and  had to excuse myself to get home and pack as my family was leaving for a 5 day vacation the next morning and I hadn't started the packing process yet.

I left sketch club on a high that has lasted all 5 days of our family vacation, and learned a bunch of priceless nuggets from the experiences they shared.  All in all an absolutely neat experience to spend an evening among illustrators. 

Step Three: Character Development

Congratulations on drafting your story! And now on to one of my favorite steps in the process...character development.

In preparation for this step I have been collecting some YouTube videos of my favorite picture book illustrators sharing some of their wisdom and experience  developing their characters.

Will Terry 
Lynne Chapman
Patrice Barton
Emily Gravett


Additionally, please check out the #kidlitart website for two wonderful blog entries character development, first here, then a guest post here.

And of course for more information and links on this and all other steps in the PBDummy making process for $5 you can snag a copy of Wendy Martin's "How to Make a Picture Book Dummy in 9 Easy Steps" on her website.

Do you have a favorite website or videos that provides guidance for character development or is just simply inspirational? Please post links in the comments below. 

As an extra note, I think it's time to start thinking about tweet chats at #kitlitart. I am out of town this Thursday, so let's plan to have our first tweetchat session on Feburary 21st at 7pm MST. For those of you who may be new to twitter, I'll post some instructions next week.

Have fun creating!!

Winter Chickadee

I am not yet ready to call myself an illustrator. It still feels dishonest to me. But perhaps I've come one step closer.  I have been a member of 'Drawing Tutorials Online' for a couple of years now, it's a fantastic site and if you are looking for an online art class it's absolutely the place to be.  In January I entered a DTO contest. The theme was "Winter" and the only rule was that the image had to be a black and white image drawn in graphite or col-erase pencil.  I participated simply for the experience, with no expectation at all of winning.  

The winners were announced a few weeks ago and the three finalists' work was AMAZING! I wish I could share them on my blog, but alas they are on a private site for the students at DTO and I don't think I'm allowed to snag them.

The most amazing thing about the contest for me was that I received an honorable mention!! I am still on a high from Matt's comments about my image - so complementary and encouraging. Best of all he thought this image/style really fit children's book illustration.

So thank you Matt Archambault for your encouragement and making me feel like I might just have it in me to be a children's book illustrator one day...

Wow this is challenging!!

To those of you participating in  2013 "Unofficial" #PBDummy Challenge, how is it coming? I am finding step two really challenging. I am not a writer. I love my idea and I think it has lots of potential, but this writing business is WAY more difficult that one might expect if you've never sat down to write a children's book.

So this week I turned to a professional for advice...Mem Fox. I love her books and her website  offers some great guidance for would-be picture book writers - 'So you want to write a picture book' and   'Twenty Do's and Don'ts'.  If you need some help yourself you may want to reference her articles too.

If you have been on our fb page you may have noticed Pia's question and link to Tara Lazar's blog whose guest blogger Tammi Sauer writes about common 'structures' used in picture books. It's definitely worth a read.

Let's get started!

So Day 1!

First of all, welcome to everyone who has decided to join me for the next 25 weeks. Again, if you didn't see my blog post last night, I have made an official 'unofficial' badge for us if you are into badges and would like to put one on your blog. 

Next, Step One: Pick Your Project

For those of you joining me on this challenge, you may already have a clear idea for your project. I am excited to start a picture book idea that was sprung during Tara Lazar's 2012 PiBoIDMo challenge.
If you need some help coming up with an idea, Tara Lazar has put together some great lists- 500+ things that kids like and 79+ things kids don't like which might get your creative juices flowing.


Additional Inspiration:
(From kidlitart, January 5, 2011)

Caldecott winners, 1938-present

SCBWI Golden Kite winners, 1974-present
Note: Awards for picture book text were added in 1997.

Horn Book Fanfare list for 2011
Horn Book Fanfare list for 2012

Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2011
Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2012

New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2010
New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2011

Struggling to find an idea?
Check out the series of posts hosted by Tara Lazar during the PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) Challenge (November, 2010), and the posts during last year’s NaPiBoWriWee (National Picture Book Writing Week), hosted by Paula Yoo.

Start building your resource library
Here are three books which have excellent overviews on what makes an engaging picture book:

Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books, by Uri Shulevitz

Writing Picture Books: A Hands-On Guide From Story Creation to Publication, by Ann Whitford Paul

The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Childen, by Nancy Lamb

 And if you have not signed up yet, would you please make a comment here so we know that you are joining us for the challenge?

Tomorrow is the big day!

Tomorrow we start day one of our challenge. Are you excited?? I am!  To start us off I thought we needed a badge. So if you like badges like I do, please feel free to snag this one and post it to your blog.

See ya back here tomorrow!

The 2013 "Unofficial" #PBDummy Challenge

I had been so looking forward to participating in the 2013 #PBDummy Challenge, and when I learned that both Wendy and Bonnie are swamped this year and would not be hosting the challenge I was really disappointed.  I am too inexperienced as an illustrator to take on the challenge of hosting the official challenge, but I thought I might be able to manage hosting an "unofficial" one. This in no way replaces what Bonnie and Wendy have done, and my hope it that next year we'll be back at the kidlitart blog again.  But for 2013, if you were keen to participate in the #PBDummy challenge yourself and are looking forward to the camaraderie of a social network working on the same project, this is the place!  Everyone is welcome.

I am keeping this year simple. I will post a new blog entry at each new step during the challenge, referencing encouraging blog posts previously posted at the kidlitart blog (a big thank you to Wendy for allowing me to reference their materials). Participants can support each other through the #PBDummy facebook page, and are welcome to participate in weekly Thursday night #kidlitart tweet chats (7pm MST). There will be no prizes at the end of June, just the satisfaction that after 25 weeks of hard work, we will  have a finished a #PBDummy ready for submission.  So if all that sounds good to you, here is the challenge...



What is the 2013 “Unofficial” #PB Dummy Challenge? This is a 25-week-long online group challenge to create and submit a picture book dummy.
Start date: January 7, 2013
End date: July 1, 2013

Who can participate?  Anyone interested in making a Picture Book Dummy

Are there any rules for the challenge? No rules at all for participating. The idea is to have a great time while accomplishing something useful. If you’ve ever taken part in a similar challenge, you know the value of community: checking in regularly, encouraging others, allowing yourself to be held accountable to a schedule—all this will help you get the most from the experience.

Do I have to post my work online?  No, however if you would like to share your sketches or ‘Work In Progress’ on our private FB Group page, please feel free.  Please be mindful that this is at your own discretion: only post what you are comfortable sharing. We will also be discussing our work and creative process in general terms via the #PBDummy hashtag and special #kidlitart chats.
So pull out your #PiBoIdMo stash, dust off those concept sketches you’ve been hoarding since art school, and join us as we commit to getting it done!

The next 25 weeks   Each step in the challenge will be introduced by a post on this blog. There will be a “How’s it going?” Twitter chat scheduled at the close of each step in the process, to keep us on course.

THE SCHEDULE
STEP 1: Pick your project (1 week) Jan. 7-Jan. 13
STEP 2: Draft the story (4 weeks) Jan. 14-Feb. 10 
STEP 3: Develop the characters (2 weeks) Feb. 11-Feb. 24 
STEP 4: Storyboard text and art (2 weeks) Feb. 25-Mar. 10 
STEP 5: Render tight, full-size sketches (8 weeks) Mar. 11-May 5 
STEP 6: Produce final art of two spreads (4 weeks) May 6-June 2
STEP 7: Assemble the dummy (2 weeks ) Jun. 3-Jun.16 
STEP 8: Research submissions; prepare dummy package (1 week) Jun. 17-Jun. 23 
STEP 9: Submit (1 week) Jun. 24-Jul. 1


Additional Resources:
Twitter Tag: #PBDummy
Thursday 7pm MST Twitter Tweet Chat Tag: #kidlitart
facebook page: #PBDummy Challenge


Please scroll back through the posts and guest interviews from 2011 & 2012’s Kidlitart #PBDummy Challenge, which are archived on the Kidlitart blog. These posts contain valuable lists of reference materials and links, and will be referenced throughout this year's challenge. Wendy Martin has compiled all this information into a handy ebook, which you can download from her site for $5, I have a copy and it's a wonderful reference.

That’s it! Nine easy steps to success. Ready to get started? Let’s get to it!  All you have to do now is:
1. Please comment below so we know who all the official participants on the 'Unofficial' challenge are and
2. Join the facebook group if you are not yet a member (#PBDummy Challenge).

Good luck!  We start Monday.

create your own success

Here is a really great post from The Visual Storyteller's Studio. It's an interview with Bas Waijers who among other thing turned a struggle with publishing a picture book into a successful experience creating a app.  I loved his advice at the end of the post. So much so that I'll include it here:

"Strive to be as good as you can be. And draw as much as you can draw. Each and every drawing makes you better as an artist, never worse. Always keep learning more and absorb the world around you because anything can inspire you. Sketch and save your ideas. And then sketch some more! Put your work out there in the world for people to see. Don’t keep it to yourself! Have a strong and clear online presence. Be objective and only show good work.

Define what you are most passionate about and focus on that, whatever it is. Because that’s most likely what makes you unique.
And most important: Make Believe!"

Character Design Exercise

One of my favorite character designers is Peter deSeve - how can you not!  Recently I took out a compilation of his character designs from the library, both me and my children looked through his sketches over and over.
I think that coming up with creative characters are so challenging. I suppose it comes with practice, but to really think outside of the box is even more of a challenge.On that note, today I came upon a post with an amazing idea to do exactly that - think outside the box and create unique characters.  Here is the exercise ! Thanks to Letters From Schwarzville for posting!...note not only is this a great exercise for illustrators, I think it would be a fun challenge for grade school kids. Heck, I'm going to save this for a fun rainy day activity from my children.

Making a Storyboard

So as part of my Marks and Splashes course, a few months ago I worked on a storyboard for the mouse story. Admittedly it was a quick job, and I have revisited that storyboard many times since - altering pages here and there. I think it's time to revisit the storyboard again - there are still pages that I'm not totally happy with and over time I have thought of new ideas for other pages. As I am getting further along in the course I'm starting to have to make some real decisions on what the page layouts will be as larger more detailed sketches for these pages are looming.  Being a part of the #kidlitart challenge (see pencil image on sidebar) has brought extra motivation and along with it some added info on creating a storyboard and planning the layout of a picture book.   In fact I have come across three great resources just this week.

Firstly, Wendy Martin of Kidlitart has created a great ebook called "How to Make a Picture Book Dummy" (available on the Kidlitart website for only $5).I won a copy this week, thanks again Wendy! It is full fantastic info and I'm so thrilled to have a copy of it.

Next, Tara Lazar posted a fantastic explanation as to why picture books usually are 32 pages and describes in detail the different between a self-ended layout and a color ends layout...before reading her post I didn't even recognized the difference, but it's huge!

Finally, I am working my way through the famous must have for picture book author/illustrators -  Uri Shulevitz' "Writing with Pictures", chapter 6 goes into detail on storyboarding. I must admit I'm finding the book a bit of a slog to get through. Perhaps because I tend to sit down and read in the middle of the afternoon on my comfy sofa.

But there you go, some great resources to check out!

Session 8 & 9

For my "Marks and Splashes" course, this week I was working on research - a scavenger hunt of sorts to find reference images and videos for our book (Amy's words, my illos). What a fun exercise this was! The next image that I am going to work on is for the page that will read "pesky, scary mice". I have had the image for this page in my head for a long time, but have never collected reference photos for it. I was looking online - Google-ing and scrolling through Pinterest (how lucky we are as illustrators now with the internet and thousands of images at our disposal in seconds), and then I thought why not set up a still life of this image in my head rather than looking through tons of photos? So I went to the one room in the house that has the door opening the right way and set up various items, used a flashlight to get the shadows I needed, got my boys helping me, one as a model, one holding the door and one as a cheerleader (although he did let me borrow one of his "Pet Shop" character which was the stand in for the mouse in our story). It was such a fun exercise to do and I think I'll enjoy drawing the image all the more since it's more personal with our familiar household items in it.

Session 9 was a review on perspective. Not very long I ago I did a few chapters on perspective with Matt an instructor at SVA in NYC and creator of the online drawing class DTO (highly worth investing in by the way!), but good to address perspective again and take the opportunity to consider composition and value at the same time...there is so much to think about when creating an image that work!...My next thing about perspective to master = to throw a character into the perspective mix (scene/person/animal/action all working together)

I am feeling a bit like a illustration junkie - trying to take advantage of and collecting all the learning I can. This week I was trying to win a copy of Will Terry's 6 video session on designing an image. I was so diligent checking his blog multiple times a day, but the one night I got sucked into working on our family blog I missed the window of opportunity! Oh well, I have heard such great things about his class too, that will be my next investment...thank goodness I have a supportive and patient husband. :)

Marla Frazee

Tonight I discovered this interview with Marla Frazee where she talks about her journey to becoming an award-winning Illustrator. She has some other great video links on her website.

Patrice Barton

Patrice Barton is not only a great illustrator, but from some interviews of her that I have seen, she is so genuine, sweet and kind. Here's an article she wrote recently about her approach to illustrating a picture book vs. a chapter book.


In addition, here's a link to an interview she did with Mark Mitchell where she talks about her process as she created her new book Sweet Baby Moon.

Video clips on illustration

I happened upon a great video this week, an interview with Polly Dunbar with was both interesting an inspiring. She talks about her process and offers some advice for new illustrators.

One piece of advice was to draw all the time. She compared drawing like running, which I can related to, and said that as with running you have to draw all the time to get better. A week away on holiday and it takes a bit to get back to where you were in your drawing. And she certainly has taken that advice to heart herself, I was amazed by the stack of sketchbooks she had filled as she worked on her characters etc for her books.









And then of course, I can't get enough of Quentin Blake, so here's a little clip from him as well.

How To Be a Children's Book Illustrator

As a part of this journey into the field of illustration I recently joined a new online class - How To Be a Children's Book Illustrator (HTBACI), a class built and taught by Mark Mitchell. It's been a motivating experience thus far and I am really excited about the things I will be learning there paired with my continued work at DTO which is a fabulous website so deep with video instruction that I think I will happily spend years as a member.

What I enjoyed this week at HTBACI was the sharing of information by both Mark and the other students of the online community. This week I watched a number of inspiring video clips and articles.

Here are a few and what I took from them.

A video of Alicia Padron painting one of her lovely watercolor characters. I was surprised to find her use so much pencil to shade her character after it was painted. It worked so well!




An article entitled "Why We're Still in Love with Picture Books" by Allyn Johnston and Marla Frazee which speaks to the future of picture books and why we will always want them around - the impact they have on us and our relationships with the children we read them to.

“As we share the words and pictures, the ideas and viewpoints, the rhythms and rhymes, the pain and comfort, and the hopes and fears and big issues of life that we encounter together in the pages of a book, we connect through minds and hearts with our children and bond closely in a secret society associated with the books we have shared. The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud — it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony.”



Members of HTBACI also had the opportunity to watch an interview Mark did with an illustration duo - Jeff Crosby and Shelley Ann Jackson. They talked about their experience as students and getting in to the business, shared some of the books they have published and the process they went through - the research, trying to get the books published etc... as well as offering some advice for those just starting out. Some of the take-aways for me were draw all the time - go to figure drawing classes and draw on the street. Draw what you love and make sure to include those subjects you are passionate about in your portfolio as publishers will ask you to draw then things that they see in your portfolio (if you want to draw dragons, makes sure to incl those kind of pieces in your portfolio). Join a crit group, go to conferences and don't be shy - network with the presenters as well as other illustrators, you never know what work can come from those important connections.

...so there are some tidbits of learning for the week. Not bad eh??!

Characterization

Will Terry, who teaches at Utah Valley University, has put together some DVDs on illustrating Children's Books. There is a 24 min preview on character design. Watching it I learned some GREAT tidbits. His videos may be on my Christmas wishlist later this year!

Research

It always amazes me how much information is available to us through the internet, thanks to the generosity of so many who offer their knowledge and wisdom. Tonight I have come across a number of new websites which are overflowing with great info on Illustrating Children's Books - sites that I will refer to again and again I am sure. Thanks Marla Freeze, Mark Mitchell, and 7imp.

IF - Celebrate

We have had occasion to celebrate lately too with a new addition to our family. It's left me with little time to draw over the last two weeks, but here' s a little sketch I managed to complete for IF.