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A bit quiet on the blog lately, due chiefly to a pressing book deadline. I'm indoors sweating over a drawing board rather than under the summer sun, but almost done now, I'll post images when it's all handed in.

Nevertheless, much as I yearn for London, there's much around here to count blessings for .

Wow. That was the best conference I've been to.

My favorite parts were my personal 15-minute Portfolio Critique and the Anonymous Art Screening, both with Laurent Linn, Associate Art Director at Henry Holt. The Anonymous Art Screening wasn't exactly anonymous - there were only 4 of us illustrators and we have distinct styles - Alison Lyne, Mary Uhles, Cheryl Mendenhall and me. The 4 of us at the Art Screening were thrilled to have over an hour with an Art Director to ask questions and figure out how to better our artwork for trade publishing. That alone was worth driving to Nashville! Laurent was able to point out what specific things worked and what didn't work in each painting and explain why. Also, whether each piece was a better fit for trade picture books or mass market and why. He rocked!

Some points Laurent made:
1. My personal portfolio - My two strongest pieces for trade picture books are my Wacky Wedding giraffes and my painting entitled, "Shhh..." of Santa and a little boy. My sketches would work well as black and white artwork for inside middle grade novels. I should do some more sketches of middle-school aged kids, especially in a sequence and submit them to editors and art directors. I had never seriously considered that before, but now I'm excited about the possibility.
2. Since I have both mass market and trade pieces, I should separate the two and label them as such on my website. Great point!
3. What really makes or breaks a character:
The pose - kids don't sit or stand straight, show feelings and personality in the pose, catch an active moment in time
The facial expression - emotion counts
The clothing - specific outfits that show personality, not just a colored tee and jeans
Interaction with other characters and environment
4. Trade illustrations have more light and shadow like fine art. Mass market tends to be flatter.
5. Overall advice: Illustrations must be narrative; tell a story. Skewing a bit by angling floors and making sure elements aren't on the same plane adds energy. Make sure the illustration looks like it's telling a child's story, not just a painting with a child in it. It should have picture book story ability - what is about to happen next in the illustration?

Here are some other tidbits from the conference:

Lin Oliver, the Executive Director and Queen of SCBWI, gave the keynote address. She gave great advice on ways to establish and build a career in children's publishing. She mentioned Richard Peck's quote, "For every one book you write, read 1000." Read, read, read was her number one suggestion. Other suggestions included: write the kind of book you like to read; have someone else read your work out loud to you; make your main character face a tough choice by putting them in a tough situation and then upping the ante; cut any scene that doesn't forward the story; and it's not a children's book if the child doesn't solve the problem in your story.

I went to two seminars by Jennifer Wingerzahn, an Editor at Clarion. In her revision seminar, we each wrote an opening line to a book. Then we revised that sentence 9 different times by following her instructions. It was really interesting to hear how dynamic everyone's opening line became. Here's mine:
My opening line: A hippo followed me to the water park.
1. Change the tense: A hippo follows me to the water park.
2. Change the narrative voice: A hippo followed Lexi to the water park.
3. Tell it from the opposite point of view: I followed Lexi to the water park.
4. Add a sound effect: A hippo THUMPED, THUMPED, THUMPED, behind me all the way to the water park.
5. Use a Jane Austen style: A distinguished hippotamus woefully followed a young mistress to a disrepected amusement facility.
6. In verse: Hippo followed me to the park,
There we met a nasty shark.
7. Use a similie or metaphor: As a baby duck follows after his mama, my pet hippo tottered behind me to the water park.
8. Use a Huck Finn style: I couldn't stand that there hippo, but aww schucks, he followed me all the way to the water park.
9. Use alliteration: Purple hippo perfectly pranced to the park.

I also went to two seminars by Laurent Linn. In one of his seminars, he described some of the different genres of picture books: holiday books, fairytales, a child's discovery of the world sometimes through his/her culture, books for the very young that deal with a difficult topic, nonfiction poetry books, and animal fiction books. There's plenty more, but it was interesting to see the various genres and see where my two picture book manuscripts that I'm working on fit in.

We had a block of time in critique groups and I was part of the Listserv Critters, which means we exchanged manuscripts and did written critiques before the conference for the other 4 people in our group. That was helpful and fun.

I also had a paid manuscript critique with Cheryl Zach, the chairperson of the SCBWI Regional Advisors. She said my picture book manuscript just needed a bit of reformatting and polishing and is ready to submit. I think I'll start working on a sketch dummy for that manuscript this week.

Here's a shout of thanks to Genetta, Candie, and Tracy for all your planning. The whole conference was inspiring and insightful. It was fun to meet new friends. And my husband, Casey, and I actually got a double bed this year at the conference center! Last year, they had given away our double bed and we had to squeeze both of us into their smaller-than-a-twin sized bed. They had offered us two rooms, but we were newlyweds at that time and there was NO WAY that we were going to sleep in different rooms...

Anyway, next month I'm heading to the SCBWI conference in Birmingham, Alabama. Time to get to work to prepare some more portfolio pieces using Laurent's suggestions. I also have some freelance work I better start on (a logo, greeting card designs, and website revisions). Hope you enjoyed my conference report. Warm wishes!