Progress

It's been a busy week, and I suppose every week should be this busy when I am working on the 12x12 challenge, the PBDummy challenge and the Marks and Splashes course.  I am finding it really hard to put in all the time required, balancing it with day to day responsibilities and being a mom. But from last week's Kitlitart tweet chat I have come to realize that I am certainly not alone, tons of illustrator moms are doing it, so I just need to buck up little camper and get it done! :)

So that was my attitude this week. Some mornings I woke up early, some nights I worked late, but the list got done...and that was during spring break when the kids were home. So pretty good I'd say. 

The big things completed this week were my 12x12 story draft for March (just finished it tonight so under-the-wire but complete), chapter 13 of M&S and a few medium sized compositional and color panels for my picture book dummy. My goal is to complete composition and color studies of all the panels in med size this next week and then I'll have a month to do full scale drawings of the panels.

Better get to work!

Manga hair

Hair has always been a challenge for me to draw. I seem myself getting better as I practice, and Matt from DTO has some great tutorials that have given me some insights into how to draw hair more realistically. But for those times when I want to draw realistic hair that is a little more 'cartoony' I seem to gravitate toward Manga hair.  Here is a great tutorial by Mark Crilley on drawing Manga hair that I watched today.

more photoshop tutorials

Just a quick note of some great tutorials that have been posted by classmates at Marks and Splashes - thanks to all for sharing!

Monster Cutie has posted links to 20 'mighty fine' tutorials, I have tried a couple and loved them all I highly recommend spending some time looking at these.
drawinghowtodraw.com has some great stuff on photoshop, illustrator, using a wacom tablet etc...
Digital Art Secrets has a great post on using traditional painting techniques in Photoshop

tweet chats

In my attempt to take more advantage of social media and learn as much as I can about illustration and kid lit I have been participating in some tweet chats of late. How GREAT is twitter! I came hesitantly into the world of twitter but have found it a wealth of knowledge. But it's the tweet chats that I have been most surprised by.  I have faithfully joined the weekly 7pm MST tweet chat at #kidlitart for the past month.  For illustrators of kidlit it's an amazing resource of author/illustrators sharing knowledge and experience. I highly recommend it. In addition to this tweet chat, Katie Davis, Diane de Las Casas and Elizabeth O. Dulemba host a tweet chat the first Wednesday of each month - with the hash tag - #kidlitPRChat.  Sunday nights there's a group that chat about epublishing and story apps - #storyappchat which my online classmate Syliva Liu often raves about.

So, just to sum up here are some quality tweetchats to tune into, perhaps I'll find you there...
#storyappchat -  9-10pm EST Sundays
#kidlitart - 9-10pm EST Thursdays
#kidlitPRChat - 6-7pm EST the first Wednesday of each month

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!"

just for fun

After reading Helga and Amy's comments on my last entry I thought it might be fun to post the original 'auntie' character sketch I drew two years ago, so here it is, which one do you prefer?...The new chic Victoria Beckham-ish version or the 'wild and whimsical' hippie-like version??

...I'm thinking now something a little in-between the two.

Step 3 - Character Development

We are getting deep into the #PBDummy challenge at Kidlitart, just finishing the third step, two weeks of working on our characters. It has been a fun experience, but a real challenge for me. I have had an advantage in that I have been thinking of these characters for a few years, and some of the characters are based on people I know - it's their experience the story is based on. So the mom and the aunt were relatively easy....although the aunt is perhaps looking a little too chic with those sunglasses - in the story she has been described as being 'wild and whimsical'.

My main challenges are - drawing the character so they look like themselves sketch after sketch, and drawing in a consistent style - I bounce back and forth between drawing realistic characters and more cartoony characters.  Although our character development phase is over I am going to have to revisit a few of these characters for that reason. The little boy and the mice seem more cartoony than the mom and the aunt - which probably won't match up very well. For now, I'll leave them as they are.

If you have any feedback on how I can improve these characters, please leave your feedback in the comments.

On to step four - storyboarding!

maximizing your online presence

I just finished reading a great article from theabundantartist about maximizing ones online presence. I am not at a point where I am ready to start marketing myself, but when that time comes it certainly makes sense that I not only need a blog but a website as well where I can display my portfolio, contact info etc...This article speaks to the need to have both ones blog and ones website linked together to ensure that your web traffic is directed to both sites. There are also links to tutorials on how to merge your current blog with a website. Great info to reference when the time comes!

Lately I have also been overwhelmed with social media. It can be so time consuming to keep up with it all!! Below are some great articles that can help maximize ones online presence while at the same time cut the amount of time spent maintain ones blog, twitter, facebook, linkedin accounts, etc...

from the Abundant Artist  ("How to use social media and still have a life") who then links to an article entitled:" Streamlining your social Web presence in six steps", "Free services to streamline your social networking experience", and "It's about time: 5 tools to streamline your social media". Tools like twitterfeed, igoogle and using google alerts are suggested.

My first award!

Last week I was surprised to find my blog was awarded - the Liebster Award, granted me by Kerie Miller at illustration junky. Kerie is an illustrator and an online classmate of mine. It was a thrill and honor to receive this little award, so thank you Kerie. Now I knew very little about this award and what it represents so I had to do a little digging and discovered that it's an award for 'up and coming' blogs that have less than 200 followers. (I certainly fit the second qualification and hope to live up to the first).

As part of the tradition of this award I apparently need to share 5 things about myself and pass the award on to 5 blogs fitting the criteria.

As far as 5 things about me...I am a land-locked girl who loves the ocean (married to a dear man who has a phobia of large bodies of water)...I love to run with my girlfriends that way I have weekly guilt-free social time...I speak three languages, one being Chuukese - officially an "unwritten language" which, living in Western Canada has surprisingly never come in handy....I am trying to be healthy but chocolate is my nemesis...I am happiest when I am outside either sketching or participating in an activity with my family.

And now I officially pass on the honor of the Liebster Blog Award to:

Helga Pearson
Sylvia Liu
Jaqueline Hudon-Verrelli
Lynne and Melissa 
Ken Teghtmeyer

(Now honestly I can't tell how many followers some of these blogs have, for some blogs it's not obvious and if you are over 200 followers my apologizes but these blogs are deserving of recognition!)

Photoshop Tutorials

I have come across a couple sites that provide free tutorials in Photoshop that look intriguing, something I'm going to have to sit down and go through one day.


Kim Klassen Cafe
ctrl+Paint

Thanks to those who are so generous on the web, sharing their skills and knowledge.