Rich Davis is an amazing illustrator. On his website he demonstrates how to draw a leafless tree. In just over a minute, Rich--with his pen in one hand and his camera in the other--draws a beautiful tree. He brings the blank paper to life as if by magic. Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words then Rich's illustrations speak volumes. Check out the link above and see if you can keep up with his wizard drawing skills.
Then after you've created your own tree, try writing a story around it.
Leaf-it-out, so to speak.
Is your tree in your main character's front yard? Maybe it has a favorite swing attached to it.
Or perhaps your tree is in the middle of a cemetery. Will your main character dare to climb it in the dark at midnight?
Have fun writing and illustrating!
Continuing the series about Alternate Publishing. This is part 5 of 7.
Alternate Publishing Series TOC
Rich Davis is an illustrator extraordinaire, with a generous heart and amazing talent. After being laid off from years as a greeting card illustrator, he went freelance. He has illustrated a series of books for Viking and uses those drawing skills to pull kids into the art world. And in the end, he’s publishing his own education resource book, too. Read Rich’s blog chronicling his one year journey in making his next children’s book for Viking is at creatingtinybook.blogspot.com
My Alternative Route to Alternative Publishing
Guest Post by Children’s Book illustrator, Rich Davis
Three years ago, I ventured out into the self employment arena. It was not planned, it happened unexpectantly. One of the ways I wanted to try and earn money was through doing presentations for children at libraries and schools since I am a children’s book illustrator. I had drawn with kids quite a bit before this time and I had
seen firsthand that kids like a game….
cartoons…
and drawing.
I combined these three ingredients into one and invented a simple drawing game called Pick and Draw (if you go to pickanddraw.com, you can actually try it online to see how it works).
But I didn’t invent it to take into the market place, I invented it to use for my own presentations in libraries and schools. I didn’t know if it would work. At the first library that I used it, I was floored by the response of the kids (very excited and loved it…wanted more). I had made a large prototype deck and it was the only one there was. I did not know what I had and even excused the success of that first trial as a “fluke”…a good day. But when I tried it at the next place, it happened again…but with an even better response. And people began asking me where they could get it.
I had come from a creative background where I had been a “draw
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