Texture

I recently completed an amazing online class taught by Will Terry and Jake Parker who have created a 'School of Visual Storytelling'. I can't say how much I loved the class and have come out of it with more focus and motivation to keep working toward this dream of becoming an illustrator of children's books.  Additionally the students in the class were great and we have come out of the class with a community of support.

There is so much to learn, but I am working on babysteps. On of these first steps is going to focus a little more of digital painting and harnessing the power of Photoshop. I found a great tutorial last week on apply texture by Alexandria Neonakis.  On this page, there is also a link to some great textures that are free to download. 

#PBDummy Challenge - Step 9: The Pitch

This is it, our last step!

A HUGE congratulations to those of you who will be submitting their PBDummies this week.

I read a very timely post just yesterday that goes with this and last week's step. Please read "Seven Agents Talk About the Most Common Submission Mistakes".  Additionally, as always I'll reference last year's great post at Kitlitart for step 9 which you can find here.

This will be my last post for the challenge. Thanks to all who participated. I hope you enjoyed the challenge or at least the process along the way. It was great knowing I wasn't alone in this but that there was a group of us scattered throughout the world working on this project together.

I'd love to keep in touch through the facebook page, and when my Thursday nights are freed up I plan to regularly join the kitlitart tweet chat.


All the best,
Lisa

(ps. sorry for the late post. You may have heard that Calgary has experienced some crazy flooding this week and although we are fine, we've been out helping those affected.)

#PBDummy Challenge - Step 8: Submitting your Dummy

If you have made it to this second last step, I hope you feel REALLY proud of yourself! It's an amazing accomplishment, especially since you are probably doing this as a side project, at odd hours of the day, after having completed all the things that had to be done first.  And to those of you who like me have fallen behind, good for your for hanging in there, and not giving up! We will get it done, just a little later than planned. :)

Your dummy is made, now where do you send it?  Query letters, pitches...Author/Illustrator Courtney Pippin-Mathur gives some great tips on the process surrounding the submission of your Picture Book Dummy here.

I thought I might add a few more links for some 'food for thought'.
The Dirty Work of Illustration - Will Terry
Getting Your Work Seen - Lynne Chapman
Illustrating Children's Books Part 3 - Lynne Chapman
Getting My First Ever Book - Lynne Chapman

#PBDummy Challenge - Step 7: Assemble the Dummy

Sorry this post is a day late. I was sick yesterday but feeling much better this morning!  Well, on to a new step this week, and nearing the end of our challenge. Just a month left.

How did everyone do on step 6 - producing two final pieces of art? I am feeling like I'm not a very inspiring leader for this challenge. I have a few uncompleted steps - still working on full roughs, but I did jump ahead to try to complete two pieces, although not finished yet ;(.  They are coming along however, and I am making some progress and having fun doing it, so I guess in the end that's what counts!  Baby steps...this sounds like something I posted for step six.  Anyway, on to step 7.

Last year at Kidlitart, guest blogger Will Terry gave some great advice about assembling a dummy for ones book. Please take the time to read his post here.

I bought an ipad last year, and on some other advice from Will Terry or perhaps it was Silvia Liu, I bought the app "Book Creator". If you have an ipad, "Book Creator" is a simple way to create a great looking digital PBDummy. I highly recommend it. In fact, I like to create a dummy with my rough sketches just to see if my page turns seem in the right place and my spreads are engaging from page to page before I get into some serious drawing.We have two weeks for this step. So plan to have your dummy assembled by June 13th.


Other tidbits 

Next week I am going to start an new illustration course taught by Will Terry and Jake Parke called Illustration for Storytellers. I am so excited about it!!  One can still apply for the 'lite' version of the class if you are interested.

Also, this Thursday at 8pm MST Will and Jake are doing a drop-in through gotomeeting.com  Basically it's a free 1 hour class for the first 25 people who sign in. You can get more information about the class from Will's blog post.

Please also keep in mind that the #kidlitart tweet chat is back! Every Thursday you can tune in at 7pm MST. For instructions on how to join a tweet chat, please check out my previous blog post.




#PBDummy Challengers, I'd love to hear how you are progressing by posting a comment below and add a link to the final art pieces you have done, your roughs, whatever! :) And please check out our fellow challengers here.

Have fun putting together your dummies!!

Lisa

#PBDummy Challenge - Step 6: Produce final art of two spreads

A part of me is relieved that step five is done, but I don't know why because I didn't finish it!  Thanks to those of you who checked in over the last couple weeks, it's been fun to hear about your progress. It sounds like the majority of us are pressing on in spite of life's distractions which held us up a bit.

We are getting close to the end of the challenge. And this step should be a fun one. Even for those of us who haven't finished rendering tight, full-sized sketches, no doubt we have enough of our sketches complete that we can produce the final art for two of our pages.  Let's try and see if in the next four weeks we can do it.

This will be tricky for me as a week from tomorrow we start a bit of a house renovation. I have had to pack up my computer and my desk and will have to complete step 6 from my bed, possibly using only my ipad...but I've seen professionals do completed work on their ipads (via YouTube), so I should be able to too. It will be a fun experiment.

For a little inspiration, please check out last year's entry on the kidlitart blog post for step 6.

And great news! As I referenced the kidlitart blog tonight I discovered that the weekly tweet chat is back!!  Apparently they started mid-April with three new moderators. So please, if you are free tune into their live Twitter chat Thursdays at 9:00 pm Eastern. This tweet chat caters to children's book illustrators, picture book authors and author/illustrators.




In case you are not familiar with how to participate in a tweet chat, please refer to this post.

And for one last bit of inspiration, if you are a fan of Lynne Chapman, you may like to read about the progression she recorded on her blog as she created 'Baby Can Bounce' here.

#PBDummy Challenge - Final week of step five

We have arrived at the final week of step five, rendering tight, full-sized sketches.  I am determined to have my loose - half sized sketches completed in time for the deadline which will put me in pretty good shape for step six.  It seems pretty quiet out there the more the weeks pass by, which is of course expected. These challenges are hard to keep up with. But out of curiosity, how many of our 37 challengers are still with us??

Please post a comment if you are still working on your PB Dummy and let us know how you are doing!!


Just as a side note, I have taken the plunge and signed up for a new course. You may be interested so I'm going to put a plug in for Will Terry. He has created a LIVE online 5 week course on Visual Storytelling. I am super excited about it, I'm a big fan of Will and he is teaching this course with another extremely talented illustrator -  Jake Parker. Find out more about these talented illustrators here.

If you are interested, you'll have to sign up fast, so go and check it out!!

#PBDummy Challenge - two weeks left in step five

So my PBDummy friends...how many of you will be completing step 5 on time?  I hate to admit it, having been so adamant that I would complete this challenge on time, but I am not going to have all my full sketches complete. When I look back and think about the last six weeks I can't think of anything specifically that's kept me from completing this step, just the business of life I suppose. So it's a good lesson learned. Our art has to be made a priority and not left to 'when we have time' to get to it.  And admittedly, the last few weeks that's what has happened to me. I have come to the conclusion that for me, right now with three young boys, I am going to have to get up early in the morning and start my day working on my illustrations to ensure that time is made everyday to fulfill this dream of becoming an illustrator.


On a positive note, I did get some great feedback from Matt at DTO who holds crits for his students each Monday. He reviewed one of my full-spread compositions and gave me lots of great suggestions for improvements.  Below are the two ideas I submitted, starting with working through the compositional shapes to a rough tonal sketch.

Best of luck to all my PBDummy buddies who are working their hearts out to get there sketches finished!!

#PBDummy Challenge - Progress on Step 5

Three weeks into step five, and admittedly I don't have much to show for it yet. This is the step where I fell off the challenge last year, and non-completion is not an option this year! My boys have had spring break and we've enjoyed Easter which has been wonderful, but has put me off my regular schedule. However I'm recharged and hopefully mentally prepared to get things done over the next five weeks.

I re-read Mark Mitchell's 2012 post on the kitlitart blog which has put me in a better frame of mind. Mark is so good at encouraging his students/readers and offering baby steps through the process. So hopefully following his wisdom I'm going to be a proud owner of a full-sized dummy by May 5th!!

My biggest challenge is not letting the rest of my responsibilities take over my drawing time. Lately life continues to steal that time away. Where are you finding time to illustrate? Do you get up early? Stay up late?...I'm curious.

(loving this sketch by Mark Mitchell)

Wishing the rest of you challengers luck over the next 5 weeks!!

LT

#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.