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With the founding of the Canada Council for the Arts over 50 years ago,the government of Canada has always recognized the fundamental importance of supporting a diverse range of artistic practices at “arm’s length”, meaning that no political party ever has the right to dictate to artists what they can do, even when supported by public money.

Until now.

Franke James’ work is political, yes. But in a democracy, this is desirable. The critical examination of policy through the arts opens up discussion in a way that ultimately helps make stronger, wiser policy.

Unfortunately, the current regime has decided that censorship is ok. I’m embarrassed my country is being lead by such anti-intellectual fascists, and I’m worried. These are not the values this country was founded upon.

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This week's Illustration Friday topic gave me a good excuse to start a sketch for a painting I've been wanting to create for a while. When I was in elementary school, I was quite obsessed with unicorns. Unicorns were the end all be all for me. I collected them, had my room decorated in all things unicorn, and of course, drew them. I had gathered up a number of my old unicorn drawings a few years ago while putting together a presentation and thought how much fun it would be to take one of those drawings and re-illustrate it today in my current style and technique. I imagine I'll add more detail in the final painting, but for now, here's today's sketch:
And here's the drawing on which it's loosely based - probably over 25 years old now:
As you can see, in my childhood fantasy world, rabbits could fly which is why in my new sketch we find a lop rabbit sitting in a tree. According to a small note at the top of the old drawing the unicorn in the picture's name is "Pollen," whose acquaintance I'd imagine no one suffering from seasonal allergies would ever desire to make.

Another illustration on the topic - if you've ever visited my Etsy store then you've probably already seen this painting, but since I'm on the subject I thought I'd post it here too:
This is an ancient painting from my art school days. Nearing the end of my time in college, I realized I hadn't yet revisited my favorite subject of old, so I did this painting for a class assignment. The little girl riding the unicorn is more or less my childhood self, complete with great big glasses and a school uniform. This little painting's for sale here.

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“It is my great strength that gets me where I want to go but it is my flaws, my weaknesses, that made me who I am.”

Sometimes I am so determined in my need to succeed that I forget just how much I have accomplished and just how far I have come. I don’t like to dwell on things I can’t change or things that I have no control over. Instead just keeping moving forward towards the goals I set for myself. Even as a child I never liked to compete against others, it made me feel sick inside. Instead I always just competed against myself. And I think it’s that kind of drive that gets people farther in the end.

I have dyslexia; in fact I have all three forms. Bet most of you didn’t even know there were three. The most common one is the reading one, that’s the one most people are familiar with it’s also the one most kids have. (Me, not so much with that anymore.) Another one is the writing one. (This is the one I have the worst.) When I write sometimes I move letters or words around out of order. And no matter how many times I read it back half the time it will still look correct to me because my brain is auto correcting it for me.

This is made even worse if I’m trying to write while the tv is on or someone is trying to talk to me. I will literally start transcribing the audio into the sentences inter-spaced with what I was trying to write. Sometimes words just end up there that are out of the blue and completely unrelated to anything I was thinking. Because I know this happens I work around it. I listen to music that won’t distract me and try to write mostly when everyone is asleep. Which means about 90% of my writing is done between 11pm-4am, like this for example I’m writing at 3am.

The third form is the least common. Sometimes when I’m speaking I mix the words up in the sentence but to me it sounds correct. This usually gets worse if I’m extremely upset. It also mostly happens with numbers (ya working retail was real fun with this one). But did I ever let this get in my way? No, I was in 25 musicals, choir and singing competitions growing up. Instead of running away from something I shouldn’t have been able to do I ran head long into it and practiced until I was extremely good at it. But there are still some things i just can’t like foreign language. I tried as hard as hard as I could and did pretty while grade wise but only remember a few odd words and phrases in Spanish and Italian.

I also have poor muscle memory in my hands which means things like typing with all my fingers, playing piano or using chop sticks are nearly impossible for me. But instead of focusing on what I can’t do, I just adapt around it. Anyone who chats with me in one of the weekly tweet chats or on instant messenger knows I type lighting fast but what I bet you didn’t know was that I only use 2 fingers to type. It’s all about focusing on what you need to do instead of focusing on what prevents you from doing it. Instead of beating myself up for what I could not do I just put everything into what I could do.

Dyslexia isn’t something that just goes away or something you just grow out of. It’s something you have to deal with everyday, something that’s just of part of what makes you, you. The point is not to let it run you life. Sure nearly every time I write “me” it comes out “my” instead or vice versa. And I will forever type “chnage” instead of “change” even though I know how it’s spelled.

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I try to draw several servings of fruits and vegetables each day.CTE

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Here's what arrived in the post when I was away in China!



I had SO much fun with this commission from Time Out Kids editor Emma Perry. This is the summer issue and it has loads of great tips about what to do with kids in and around London. (Only one mistake, I’m just the illustrator of You Can’t Eat a Princess!, it was written by the lovely Gillian Rogerson.) References include my fab studio mate Deadlykniteshade's giant plastic knitted squid Plarchie (who has his own blog) and Panda Panda cafe in Deptford.



Look, Panda Panda hung the print of it on their wall!



And Stories from the Web gave me such a surprise when they tweeted a link to this video, with Michael from Erdington Library in Birmingham demonstrating his remarkable book spinning abilities. Using none other than Vern and Lettuce and Morris the Mankiest Monster! Fabulous! :D (Follow them on Twitter as Sftwtweets.)


YouTube link

Apologies if you've e-mailed recently and I haven't responded yet! I'm having a heck of a time sorting through three weeks of e-mail.

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Hi again my lovelies, I'm back again to interrupt your summer with something SUMMERY.

During our New York trip, Piper of Lingdren & Smith told me that I'd probably draw beautiful maps. I had to concede the point, so I'm working on a series of maps. The series starts naturally with home, Falmouth!


I wanted to do a map that concentrated on the Falmouth I love rather than a very factual one, as I feel like I owe a huge amount to the town I felt it should be personal, but still be commercial enough to work in my folder.
First I decided my favourite things about Fal are the sea & it's exotic foliage, so my map would have a lot of water & flowers. Owing to the student population Fal isn't a lot like other Cornish seaside towns; the creativity the university draws means it's all a bit quirky on top of the usual slow Cornish pace, so I used a seaside colour scheme that's a bit more modern & a lot brighter. Fally is always cheerful & chirpy, even when it's grey & wet, which is a lot despite how many sunshines I drew on this. When the sun DOES shine it's so lovely. I'm lucky to live so close to Swanpool beach that all I see is blue & green. Swanpool is too far away from everything else to make it onto my map though, so just imagine it's much like Gylly, without the skyscraper-sized cocktail, but with a skyscraper-sized ice-cream covered in clotted-cream & pieces of chocolate.

And if THAT didn't make you want to stay in England for your summer holiday, I don't know what will.

Stats about oil, climate change & planes, perhaps. But hey! It's a Friday night, you crazy kids should be out enjoying yourselves! Go on. Just try not to wake me up when you get in.

xxx

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The Apprentice Dragons by Alison Baird is now in print and available from Lulu.com! Last summer I had these dragons on the drawing board, large dragons and little scampering ones that wouldn't behave. I finally pinned them down the page, chapter heading by chapter heading, merry companions for this delightful junior novel.

The sequel to The Dragon's Egg , The Apprentice Dragons picks up the incidental adventure of the goldfish, the "apprentice dragons" as they were called by the boy dragon, Lung Wang. Lung Wang returned to his ancestral home but Ai Lien's goldfish stayed in their bowl on the little girl's dresser.

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Actor Patrick Stewart expresses his appreciation for animation in this CNN interview and says that, “I think in film the most exciting work currently is being done in animation.”

(Thanks, Tres Swygert)

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Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Patrick Stewart

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I've wanted to post this blog since I came back from the wonderful Regional Advisor retreat in March. I know. That's a long time and a lot has happened in that time. Of note, I finished my creative thesis and had a wonderful final grad residency at Vermont College of Fine Arts that culminated in my graduation. Yes. I am officially Anna J. Boll, MFA. But enough about me. This post is about new developments at SCBWI and how you can take advantage of them.

1. Headquarters is encouraging Regional Advisors (RA's) to create programs that are low or no cost events. Here are just a few events that I've been thinking of.

Meet-Ups: Host a meet up at a local book store, the library, or popular watering hole. These events can be just social or you can ask a local author/illustrator to read from their new book, or talk about some aspect of craft or marketing.

Group Book Launch: Do you have a book coming out? I'd love to hear about it so I can connect you with others in your area who might be able to do a signing/launch activity at a local book store or library. I'm also happy to congratulate you on my blog.

Sketch Crawl: Get together with other SCBWI illustrators and go to the zoo, the aquarium, or hang out in a local park. There is plenty of subject matter for artists all around.

Portfolio Review: Have a portfolio critique session with other illustrators (live or online) so you can put your best work forward. Especially helpful before trips to major SCBWI conferences.

Museum/Library Visit: Have you always wanted to go to look at Michelson's gallery? The Eric Carle Museum? Did you know that there's a great Illustration exhibit in Lewiston-Auburn College until August 12th? Our own NESCBWI member David Kelly and many other authors are slated to speak at the Boston Public Library? If you're planning to go, let's tell other members and see if we can get a group together.

Book Clubs: Good writers have to be good readers. Would you be interested in analyzing the works of published children's authors to discuss what makes a great story /illustration.

Figure Drawing Nights: Figure drawing is a critical skill for any artist. If you are interested, email me and we will try to get a critical mass together to hire models.

Retreat Day: Do you live on a lake, in the mountains, by the ocean? Invite a few SCBWI members to join you for a day of writing with an optional sharing/critique. Have everyone bring a dish to share for lunch and keep costs low.

***If this is a sanctioned SCBWI event, I need to know about it. Send me an email at NorthernNERA at nescbwi dot org.

 

2. The 40th Annual SCBWI Summer Conference is August 5th - 8th in Los Angeles and I’ll be there! Sadly, I do not own a smartphone. If I did, I’d download the amazing Guidebook App to plan my conference. It gives you a personalized schedule, and information about each speaker and session. You can also browse maps of the event space at the Hyatt, and follow the #LA11SCBWI Twitter feed directly from the app.

 

The app is compatible with iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches and Android devices.

 

To get the guide, choose one of the methods below:

 

1. Download 'Guidebook' from the Apple App Store or the Android Marketplace
2. Visit http://guidebookapp.com/getit from your phone's browser 

 

The guide will be listed under the "download guides" section of the application.

 

3. Awards and Grants:

If you haven’t looked at the SCBWI Awards and Gra

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three childhood obsessions of mine that i have conveniently transformed into characters. reference books, the total HATRED of the color pink, and decapitating barbies.yep. i was a different kind of kid. and i'm afraid that my obsessions these days are a bit less interesting - white popcorn, flossing (that kind of goes with the eating popcorn every day territory) and greek style yogurt. FAGE -

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“Vision is nothing more than the creation of symbols in our head that represent what exists outside our body,” says Michael S. Sweeney, author of Brain: The Complete Mind.


Our brains encode the world to give it meaning. This encoding process happens automatically. People hear a car backfiring and think it was a gun. They hear a gunshot and think it was a firecracker. They feel an earthquake and think a heavy truck rumbled by.

The actual event is thus translated, accurately or not, into a symbol of the event. We react not to the raw data outside us, but to the symbol created in our minds. Both the complex structures of the cerebral cortex and the more basic emotional centers come into play in this visual response. According to Sweeney, “We react to the pictures in our heads instead of to the world itself.”

This tendency to see in symbols works both for us and against us as we try to represent the world in our artwork.

Brain: The Complete Mind by Michael S. Sweeney
Previously on GJ: The Arab Guard
The photo of me doing a street portrait in Fez, Morocco was taken in 2008 by Alan Dean Foster

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Umm... Sorry it's a little late, but at least it's new! I think that the Captain was the theme the first time I posted to AJ!

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Andy Smith illustrated two new book jackets for the Brady Udall novels, The Lonely Polygamist and The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint published in the UK by Vintage. To see some more book jackets from Andy Smith have a look at his flickr page.

To find out how to submit your news to Illustration Pages click here.

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When I was in my late 20′s I found an address for a dear friend of mine. She was my very first friend outside of the family. She lived down the road from me and so it was easy to go over to her house. We had great adventures in the woods behind her parents... Read the rest of this post

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Reminder that it’s the last 3 days for the discount on the upcoming Fairy Healing the Feminine class. Sign up for nurturance, tools and insight here.

Last 3 days of July’s discount on animal communication readings also!

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I'm making a Balto video -- I've done the sound already. It's going to be the complete book, melded with real photographs and videos. I thought I'd try my hand at animation... but I don't have Flash so I figured -- how hard could it be to animate things old school? So I tried it with the boat in Photoshop. I cut out the boat and the smoke and colored in the background and then put the pieces back on and then moved them inch by inch. All of this took me a day and a half and all I have to show for it is about 10 sec of a boat moving in a jolted manner!

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Guess what opens today? They are small and blue and The Los Angeles Times says their film is “…grating and cloying. This misguided attempt at a 3-D family comedy is a project even Neil Patrick Harris can’t save.”

The New York Times says “the movie frequently reminds us that the gimmick of little creatures scurrying about in the human world (Toy Story, Gnomeo and Juliet) is pretty worn out. But on a hot summer day, The Smurfs is a decent enough excuse to haul the little ones into an air-conditioned theater.”

Comments below are open only to our readers who have seen the film and wish to offer their reactions and reviews.

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Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: The Smurfs

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2. NO, DAVID! by David Shannon

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Start with action, be funny, and ask the tough questions! Fantasy author Bruce Coville shared the following insights on writing fantasy for children at the 2011 SCBWI Southern California Writer’s Day! Here are fourteen quick tips he suggested to make your fantasy novel soar!

14 Quick Tips for Fantastic Fantasy:

1.  Start with Action. Set up your problem. Set up your villain.

2. Use the rule of threes (see below).

3. Discover “The Twilight Zone” – this is the place where you leave behind the mundane world and discover the magical world. “When you leave behind the fields we know, for the fields of what we do not know.”

4. Be clever with names. Mr. Elives = Mystery Lives

5. Add window dressing. This is why we come to this type of story. Provide the ambience of a scene/space to help create a feeling of your world.

6. Get your words to do two things at once. Use a word to describe both mood and character (for example).

7. Ask the tough questions: Why are we here? What do you need?  (This is the riddle of our lives).

8. Kids love a sense of destiny in books. “This is what you came here to get,” say’s the shop keeper.

9. Butt is a great word in any kids book. It’s funny! Bring on the funny!

10. Slide in the “data” sideways. Sneak it in. Don’t be too on the nose or frontal about it.

11. End a chapter with a cliff hanger! You want to keep your reader with you. Every kid tells his/her mom “Let me finish the chapter” before going to do what mom says. Don’t let them put down your book without feeling like they must come back to it asap! There’s too much to compete with in this world (video games, internet, etc.)

12. With your first paragraph grab them by the neck, with your second paragraph stick your thumbs in their jugular, with your third paragraph hold them against the wall and don’t let go!

13. Ha, Wa, Yikes! In your novel try to include these three elements: Ha = belly laugh, Wa = Genuine tears, Yikes = Surprise.

14. You don’t have to outline, but it is often good to know where you are going, just not exactly how you will get there.

The Rule of Threes:

• Use the rule of threes (which is really the rule of four). You need three plus one to complete the group. Example: The three bears, plus Goldilocks = 4.
• The rule of threes is based on the three parts of the feminine (Goddess, virgin, and crone) plus the fourth element, the male element, which you combine together to create a full 4.

Other Great Posts on Fantasy Writing:

• Author Bruce Coville’s 8 Tips for Fantasy Writers
• Editor Ari Lewin’s thoughts on Writing the Fantasy Novel
• Author Holly Blacks Examining the Strange: Basics for Fantasy Writing
• Author Bruce Coville’s Finding the Fantastical

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