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A group of author/illustrators that are absolutely addicted to picture books and the children's book industry.
This blog serves as an extension to their online group and website.
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I've been sketching Giants and Fairies this week. I keep telling myself to work on cute animal pieces to balance out my portfolio, but this is what came out of the pencil and I want to keep going with it.
I
blogged about it with a few other sketches on
my sketch-blog. I'm going to keep playing around, rather than just sitting down to work out a tighter drawing for a portfolio or promo piece.
Today I wanted to share a wonderful link that I am sure will be really helpful to all illustrators out there.
The very talented and lovely Juana Martinez-Neal did a post on how to put a kids' portfolio together. She covers different brands of portfolios, what art to include, even how the sequence of the illustrations should go! It's just wonderful.
I confess I don't have a physical portfolio at the moment. Everything I have is online. The only time I had to make one was for a SCBWI winter conference several years ago. But I plan on putting together a really nice one at some point and when that time comes, I will definitely be following Juana's advice. :o)
I love looking for interesting videos on YouTube. Today I found this great one that I wanted to share with you.
We can see the talented Lisa Brown talking about all the books she has written and illustrated and I believe this is a class at The Academy Of Art University. She also shares her studio, her likes and dislikes in kids' books and explains how she works from thumbnails to finish art.
It's very interesting to see what she liked as a child and the books she creates now. What truly fascinates me is the fact that she really has a long line of varied work. Amazing, I love that. That's a talent not every artist has.
Oh and by the way, she is so right about the coffee mug and watercolor water. Has happened to me, for real! Hehe.. You'll know what I mean when you watch the video.
Enjoy! :o)
I came across
this great post on PW and thought I would share it with you today. I love peeking into other artists' studios, don't you? :o)
These are a few pics of mine. It's tiny and dark. Has a small rectangular window that doesn't face the outdoors, only the terrace, so almost no natural light comes in. But we have to work with what we have right?
I painted the studio white with a satin paint so the light from my 6 lamps, LOL, would reflect and it does the trick I have to say. I also have a little lamp that simulates day light, I always work with that lamp very close to my watercolors and paper.
This is Lucy, my shadow. She is usually on her bed, sleeping under my desk, like on this pic or sleeping on my lap while I work. Sometimes she likes to sit on my lap and watch closely how I paint, sneaks a kiss here and there.
Someday I hope to have a big, open and airy studio that faces the garden and that is filled with natural light... but this one will do for now. Despite how small it is and how dark it is, I still love it because its mine. :o)
Last year I illustrated a book called "Ready or Not, Here Comes Scout!" Written by Jill Abramson & Jane O'Connor, the picture book, published by Viking, is based on Jill's real-life pup, Scout. I posted some images from the book last fall, which you can see here.
Well, Scout is back in a really cute Penguin Young Reader, called "Puppy Parade." It was so fun to get another turn to develop Scout's character.
I worked with a fabulous Art Director, Giuseppe Castellano, and if you are a kidlit illustrator, you should definitely be following him on his Twitter feed!
@pinocastellano.
The process I used to create the art was the same as the picture book. I painted Scout and the puppies traditionally, but created the backgrounds in photoshop. This gave me more options to move things around, but still keep a loose feel on the art and stay compatible with the first book.
In some respects, the book was easier to work on. The format was smaller and images were bigger and simpler. However, there were a few spreads showing the town, the crowd and all the puppies that were a bit more labor intensive. A bit of controlled chaos....!
A second Penguin Reader is in the works with artwork beginning later this year.
With a limited palette, flat rendering, and brilliant use of white space
Madalena Matoso has illustrated a deep and quiet story by
Isabel Minhós Martins. Look how beautifully Matoso conveys a cityscape. A marvel!
The overarching story is about not judging a book by it's cover, but there is so much fun in the visuals and animals and silliness of behavior in their apartment building that you don't feel you are being preached to at all.
Every element, from story, to character, to design and pacing works so well. This is one for the bookshelf. The bookshelf below, by the way, belongs to
Time of Wonder (part of
Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH). I spent oodles of time in their store last week and found it to be one of THE best children's bookstores. The selection, space, and staff are amazing. One bonus as a mother shopping here? A minimal amount of toys. Your little ones will be too busy reading in the corner bench with the bears, anyhow.
The wonderful Will Terry gives great advice on how to price illustration work. Really worth while watching!
While you are at it, make sure to check out Will's gorgeous work and books. :o)
I received these tiny books! They are the smallest format I have ever illustrated and so darn cute! Pages are really sturdy and since they are so small these books will fit wonderfully in toddlers' hands.
This is my favorite spread. I thought at brushing time, bunny should be brushing ducky too. :o)Sometimes with board books there is not so much room to tell a parallel story with the illustrations as there is with Picture Books for example. Board books are very straight forward, usually with a few simple and easy to read images that little ones can really recognize. But I find there is always a way to make things interesting for little ones reading the book. I decided to give baby bunny a favorite toy, rubber ducky. So kids can look for ducky on every page, find him and look forward to the next page where they will look for him again.Another great thing about illustrating books is that sometimes the power of an image can make the text change. For example, on this page, the text initially was "dry everywhere".
I decided instead of have dad dry bunny with a towel like on the left, it would be fun to have bunny shaking his little tail. I mean, what a better way to dry all over and fast right? Hehe.. Plus I just knew kids would really like that page. Luckily Highlights agreed with me, they really loved that illustration and decided to work the text around it.
So, never doubt sending your initial ideas of how you think a book should go. Send them your best possible interpretation of the book. These are sketches and they will go through a lot of eyes in the publishing house and a lot of revisions. People can't really guess what you have in mind. The best way to tell them is to show them your vision.There is something so especial about creating books for babies. It's a book in it's simplest form. The thought of catching babies' attention and just thinking of baby snuggling with mom/dad looking with wonder at the book... It's a privilege to do this.
I have enjoyed doing a few books for Dover Publishing. I once proposed an activity book teaching outdoor kid's games like hopscotch, leap frog, kick the can. Ultimately, they asked me to do a yoga book instead. Here is one of the samples I created and now colored to add to my portfolio...
©Deborah Melmon 2013
Having a great time working on several jobs this month. One of the more brain-teasing projects is work for Highlights on new Hidden Picture Books for the very young. I was thinking very young meant "very easy," but I was wrong. Hidden picture puzzles take some doing to find creative and interesting ways to hide objects! Since the puzzles are in color, you can't just add objects willy, nilly. They have to fit the illustration so that their color is reasonable in a real world context, i.e. no blue tomatoes. And objects can't be hidden in logical places either. If you're going to hide a leaf, it can't be in a tree :) So far I've hidden a zipper in a stalk of corn, a mop in a haystack, and a horseshoe in a trumpet. Some have come easy, and some I've had to work at, but it's been super fun to combine a puzzle with an illustration.
Happy week to you all. I have been having fun experimenting with a new style lately to
possibly add to my portfolio. I had this sketch on my drawing board and was going to finish it in the experimental style but it kept telling me that it wanted to be finished in "digital felt". So I listened....
I thought I was done, but then I started wondering how it would look if instead it was done in a cut paper look. Because I work in a lot of layers, it was fairly easy to remove some here and there and revamp others. This is what I came up with. A lot like the felt
version with mainly the stitching and felt texture removed.
Hmm...I wonder how it would look in a cross stitch style...only kidding ;)
Queen Quail is Quiet: and other ABC Tongue Twisters comes out for e-readers (Kindle, Kindle Fire, and iPad) and in print on Wednesday, May 15.
Queen Quail is Quiet grew out of my love of learning and drawing. I wanted to be a little different to approaching learning the alphabet. Creating a sentence illustrating each sound for every letter sounded challenging. I started out by thinking of words for the letters and then forming a sentence I could illustrate. Sketching of thumbnail ideas came next and was much easier to do once I realized this would no longer be just a project, but a book. Most of the sketching was just on plain computer paper and once I refined the sketches into final artwork, I scanned in the images onto my computer.
The sketches were brought over to Adobe Illustrator as a layer. Then I outlined everything in a bright color (easy to see and stands out) on another layer. At this stage I think of colors and what would work for the entire book.
Then I made a copy of the outline layer and this is the layer that becomes the color layer.
Usually there is tweaking with the image just a bit (the swim cap for the duck is different from sketch to final), but I try to stay true to the original sketch since that is the foundation. I believe it is better to sketch and erase than to work out those changes digitally on the computer. When the color is complete, I'll bring the image into Photoshop for additional little changes and finally end with applying a texture.
This book took over four years to complete from start to finish and I can't wait for my baby girl to flip through the pages. I hope other kids will enjoy it too!
For the past seven of the ten years I have attended, I have blogged a recap of the NESCBWI conference. As I was gathering notes on this year's event, I decided to browse through my old posts and thought to do a 'Top 5' list.
In no particular order:
1. Melissa Sweet, author/illustrator. Due to proximity and providence, I have seen Melissa speak and have attended a few of her small workshops. Her career is awe-inspiring, her talent abounds, and she is gifted at not only sharing her enthusiasm, but techniques for writing and illustrating: how to generate and extract ideas, words, and images, etc.
2. Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, author. Prepare to get an education when you sit for a workshop with Sudipta. She tosses extremely useful basics and guidelines to writing picture books alongside gritty/witty personal stories. No snoozing in her classes.
3. Frank Dormer, author/illustrator. As an illustrator, we can't forget that without ideas and concepts, our pretty pictures fall flat. Frank delivered a fabulous working workshop for illustrators a few years back that stuck with me. It forced me to put a problem-solving cap on and work fast (don't all good workshops blaze by?).
4. Mark Peter Hughes, author. The first time I ventured into taking a writer workshop, I was lucky enough to land in a class with Mark Peter Hughes. He got us to write down, speak up, and think in broad, useful terms about character development.
5.Dan Yaccarino, author/illustrator. Well, certainly Dan's reputation as a rock-star of picture books precedes him. He shared so many gems about storytelling, bookmaking and the hard work involved in this business - I dare you to walk away without a big, shiny lightbulb hovering on your noggin.
It's publishing day at Amazon Children's Publishing for Baby Wants Mama, which was written by Nancy Loewen and illustrated by me!
At the end of the day, everyone in the family wants something....but what do they ALL want? Dinner!
© 2013 Deborah Melmon
Baby wants Mama.
Cat wants Fish.
Daddy wants supper.
Pup wants Dish.
The sparse text was a dream to illustrate as it gave me so much room to have fun and play with lots of fun details. I envisioned each page with big, colorful images.
Here is the sketch for one of the spreads. I inked the line and painted each image on watercolor paper. I then scanned in the images, cleaned them up and added details like stripes on the sweaters and dots on the baby's clothing. I was also able to adjust skin color so that all the images looked consistent.
Baby Wants Mama is available on
Amazon with a "look inside" so you can see more images.
This is the second book I have illustrated for Amazon Children's Publishing.
Give Up, Gecko!, written by Margaret Read MacDonald, was released earlier this year.
I was so excited when I checked the mail today. I received a copy of this month's issue of Highlight's new baby magazine, Hello. Here are photo's of the poem I had the privilege of illustrating. This is such an adorable booklet, perfectly sized for little fingers!
(Cover art by Maggie Smith)
Click to enlarge
click to enlarge
I've been playing around with different black & white techniques. I did a few straight gouache pieces, but I'm really enjoying this pencil and digital combo. I like how the simplicity of the process and how the freshness of the sketching comes through.
With Easter fast approaching, I want to recommend this adorable picture book written and illustrated by Theresa Smythe. Chester's Colorful Easter Eggs, is a delightful book that reinforces counting and color recognition skills while we watch Chester happily decorating and hiding rainbow colored eggs for his friends.
I asked Theresa how her book came into being and she explained that it was originally a sequel to her popular Christmas book, Snowbear's Christmas Countdown. The idea was born from her childhood and how elaborate her family's egg decorating was-- an article in a McCalls or Women's day magazine with Alice in Wonderland themed eggs still stands out in her mind.
When she initially developed her dummy book, Snowbear starred in the show but it just wasn't feeling right for her. Next, she approached it with a quirky artistic pig named Maurice living in New York City. Although he was well received by Theresa's editors, Chester the rabbit, ultimately stole the show. "Now it's hard to believe it started out with a bear, went to a pig and ended up a bunny. Because the bunny fits -- just like that!!! Everything is a stepping stone to get you from a to z ; nothing is wasted."(I agree, nothing is wasted. I have my fingers crossed that Maurice will have a book of his own one day.)
I'm captivated by Theresa's richly textured cut paper style that feels as if the pieces can be pulled right off the page. Here is a fun example
of her process, click to enlarge...
Chester's Colorful Easter Eggs is a sweet treat to add to a little one's Easter basket. As well as a fun read aloud, this treasure will keep kids engaged visually as well as motivating a rainbow filled egg coloring activity!
Happy Easter!
© copyright Alicia Padrón 2013
I recently painted these.
I just love fairies.
© copyright Alicia Padrón 2013
Nothing like a fairy to really touch the inner child in all of us, don't you think?
© copyright Alicia Padrón 2013
I have been making paper toys of every variety with my four year old since he was about two and a half. Most of them have been far too complicated for him to do alone, and frustrating for the adult who is helping along. Not only is Delphine's book gorgeously illustrated, inventive, and unique, it is surprisingly doable for a four year old with just a bit of help. The instructions are so helpful, and the addition of the heavy stock street makes this more than just toys to sit on a windowsill. They become, as the title says, My Town.
© copyright Alicia Padron 2013
This is a little sketch I drew this morning for something I made up just for fun: #Twoodle.
The words I chose to create this are Panda and Rain.
If you want to participate too, click here to learn how! :o)
Found these wonderful interviews with Mo Willems, I thought I would share them with you.
"that's the sort of effort that goes into a book.. if you noticed it, you failed."
"While I'm working on a book with one set of characters, I'm thinking and doodling about another set"
A few weeks ago a friend recommended I read I Haiku You, by Betsy Snyder. I haven't been able to procure a copy for a full review yet, but the book trailer really enticed me. The cover alone would make me read this book - but I had to share how beautifully done the book trailer is.
It struck me as just what a good trailer should be - appealing in sound, motion, and image and a tease of the whole book. I want to see more, don't you?
© copyright Alicia Padron 2013
Nothing like wooly sweater and scarves.
I wouldn't mind the itching if I could play in the snow right now! :o)
A quick sketch for this week's Illustration Friday.
As a girl, I loved moose. I read every moose book in my little library, collected stuffed versions, stickers, keychains, figurines. I even named our very large dog, Moose. I was a little obsessed. Luckily, I have lived most of my life in New England where Moose goods are not too hard to come by. Strangely, I have yet to see a real live moose. But I digress... Today's review?
This Moose Belongs to Me, by
Oliver Jeffers. How could I NOT buy this book? I love the washy brown moose, big headed protagonist Wilfred, and the brilliant combination of oil landscapes and painterly, stylized characters.
The story equal parts about assumptions, animal ownerships, wild animals, being a good friend, and the freedom of being a child.
© copyright Alicia Padron 2013
This is a little warm up sketch I did earlier this morning on this week's Illustration Friday's topic wheel.
I'm sure most of you artists out there are familiar with Illustration Friday. If you are not, make sure you check it out. It's a great way to keep your creative juices flowing, helps you come up with wonderful portfolio pieces, connects you with other artists around the world, gives you exposure and can even spark an idea for a book!
So what are you waiting for? Click here to learn more. :o)
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By: Gina Perry,
on 6/20/2013
Love the new style!
Thanks, Nancy! :)
This is wonderful, Gina. Great style.
This looks really great!
Thank you, Jenn and Becca!
She looks so serene! I have to agree with the other comments - great style! This piece doesn't need color!
I love the fresh feel of this. The black and white really works well.
Great work!
Wonderful style :)
I love it :)
Very sweet illustration.
This is AWESOME! you have a very cool style.
Thank you, everyone! :)