Spring Spots

Some tiny spots that I used to update my website banner.  I thought the candy corn and leaves were probably giving it away that my website was in need of an update.

Foxy New Work

I had it in mind since August to play around with printing in two colors for a bit of a retro feel to my work.  I finally sat myself down to experiment this weekend.  Here is my first go at it and I'm pretty excited.  I carved two plates for this illo, one that I printed in green and other the brown line work.

I added in a few touches of color after the image was printed with my trusty oil pastels.  I have to say, I'm quite smitten with foxes at the moment.  Now to work up a few more samples in this style.

Here is the sketch, in case you like to see the process. 

SCBWI Peeps

The best part of conferences and book events is seeing your old SCBWI peeps and meeting new ones!

In this photo: Austin illustrator Mark Mitchell, check out his awesome online color class.  Author Peni Griffin, a homegrown SA talent whose titles include the The Switching Well and 11,000 Years Lost.  Illustrator Layne Johnson, went all founding fathers on us for TLA to celebrate his latest book The Declaration of Independence from A to Z.  And hardworking RA from Brazos Valley, Liz Mertz.

In this photo: Janet Fox, her upcoming book is Faithful.  Another Austin member, Virian Johnson has a new YA book, Saving Maddie and dear Kelly Bennet, who has 15 books published.  (Kelly helped organize the first Texas SCBWI Writer & Illustrators cruise!  We should do another one!!!)

And look, how lucky!  We were right across from the Bloomsbury booth and enjoyed visiting with illustrator and author, Ruth McNally Barshaw.  She was busy signing her latest Ellie McDoodle book and sketching away at the conference.  Ruth is an SCBWI member from Michigan and has done some wonderful sketch-blogging of the national SCBWI conferences over the years.

The SCBWI is all about it's volunteers.  Without them we wouldn't be the thriving, resourceful and encouraging organization that we are!  My deepest heartfelt thanks goes to Catherine Stier, our coordinator for the TLA booth.  What a hard worker and an amazing talent. Next year TLA will be in Austin.  Deborah Gonzales, the new Austin RA,  and Carmen Oliver, her Assistant RA helped us set up our booth earlier this week, pictured here with Catherine.

TLA

I have been enjoying the last two days at TLA, the Texas Library Association's exhibit. Our Texas SCBWI chapters have once again banded together to promote our organization as 'the' go to source for finding children's book authors and illustrators.  The response has been great.  We've had librarians searching us out to get a hold of their copy of our speakers' source book.  We've also been hearing stories from librarians of how they used the book last year to book speakers, so good to know it's working!

A gaggle full of RA's at our booth!  Liz Mertz, RA for Brazos Valley, Janet Fox, former Brazos Valley RA, Ellen Hopkins (YA rock star) and current co-RA for Nevada and me, RA for Southwest Texas.  (What's an RA? A regional advisor for the local SCBWI chapters.  We organize the local events and cheer on our members!)

Some of our books on display - Texas is filled with talent!  We are raffling off signed copies of books from our members, giving out our speakers book to librarians and I do believe there is chocolate involved.  I heard chocolate and good books are two things to have on hand when dealing with librarians.

Books on display. 

We have been rotating the books on our main table so everyone has a chance to shine!  The green booklet are the speakers source book.  Our designer, Jennifer Murrillo, did an awesome job using old school library icons like the card catalog and check-out cards for the theme.  So taking our cue from her booklet we designed the booth to have an old world library feel.  I'll post more tomorrow on some friendly faces I've run into in the exhibit hall. 

Winter Days

6 more weeks of winter?  Not likely here in San Antonio.  But I always enjoy reliving my childhood memories of Michigan winters in my art work.   Snow crunching beneath heavy boots.  Scarves and mittens hanging to dry once we were warm inside.  And my favorite winter day activity - sitting on top of the register with a blanket trapping in all the heat.  That one drove my mother crazy!  But it was so cozy warm.  Maybe I was just a weird kid. 

Favorite ways to stay warm:

Cuddle under blankets watching movies

A big mug of hot chocolate

Extra fluffy socks (I spend most of my days barefoot)

Dreaming of planting a garden (never happens)

Make a pot of veggie chili to share with friends

Bake Valentine sugar cookies

Read in bed

Back to Basics

Or maybe the title of this post should be, "Mind your basic design principles, young padawan." Okay, that's probably something a Jedi Knight wouldn't utter, but it is something that should be on your mind if you want to pull viewers into your work on a all sorts of levels like visually, emotionally as well as through the narrative.


I had the privilege of sitting in on a talk by two-time Caldecott Honor winner Marla Frazee at the Austin SCBWI conference this weekend. She showed us examples of using those design elements to portray emotions in your illustrations. She is brilliant and this gentle reminder of getting back to the basics to tell the story visually was inspiring.

Her talk was on Storytelling Tools and Techniques. She reviewed:

Artist's Voice/Style

Charactization

Setting

Interpretation of Text

Sequential Action

The Page Turn

Format - Size and Layout Options

She encouraged us to be aware of each choice we make in an illustration and how that can impact telling the story. She tries to get at the heart of the text to find what emotions need to be portrayed in each scene.

Want a refresher on those basic design principles? Here is a good link with all sorts of resources.

Valentines

I have a great fondness for illustrations with a Valentine theme. Both in my own artwork and seeing it commercially as the holiday rolls around. Maybe the chocolate has some influence on my love of the holiday or it could be that after the grey of January the bright pop of pink, purple, red and white are just what the doctor ordered. Although I just spent a week in the Caribbean and my head is still swimming from the most amazing vivid blues, greens, butter yellow and all sorts of tropical hues. I know, it's a tough life.

One of my favorite books as a kid was this crafty little number from Mr. de Paola.  I picked it out at a RIF event, oh how I loved getting a free book each year!  It had crafts, recipes, party ideas and jokes.  The charming illustrations captured my attention and made this a year round favorite for me.  Craft books were some of my most treasured possessions as a kid.  That's a trait that has carried on and now I'm writing them!

My plan is to send out a new postcard to my mailing list in time for Valentine's Day.  I better get with the program, time is running out!