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What a great weekend at the NESCBWI conference. The organizers did a great job of herding over 500 cats (I mean attendees) this year.

And as a bonus my Cricket in Times Square poster that I blogged about earlier won second prize in the poster showcase! My friend, and annoyingly talented artist, Carlyn Beccia won first place in the published category this year. I won 2nd place last year too but that time it was to another very talented guy, Robert Squier.

I think next year I'm going to have to pull a Tonya Harding and start breaking knee caps so I can win first prize.

But seriously, I had a wonderful time. It was so nice to see so many old friends and also make some new ones. And hanging out at the hotel bar with a big group of illustrators including the amazing Tomie DePaola was a pretty neat bonus.

Sorry, I don't know.

But Henrietta here is going to help me with the talk I'm giving on Photoshop painting technqiues at the New England SCBWI conference on May 15th. I'm going to be deconstructing this image and talking about the Photoshop brushes I used and how I created them. I'm giving the talk Sunday morning with Carlyn Beccia. We'll be covering various painting techniques using Photoshop and Corel Painter. Carlyn is very talented and knows a lot about Painter, so I'm hoping to learn a few things myself.

Okay, here's the final art. But now I'm wondering if the other layout would have been better. Oh well, if I have time between now and the conference I may try and redo it.

So I'm back working on my book cover remake for the New England SCBWI conference exhibition. Today I'm going to brainstorm different layouts. My goal was to come up with at least 10 different ideas for the cover.

The cover of the paperback version of the book is approx 5" x 7.5" so I made a page of thumbnails in those proportions. It's so annoying to design something and then have to wrangle it into a space that is fatter or skinnier, so best to start out with the right proportions. The other thing that I think is useful is to do the initial thumbnails in color. Maybe the colors will change but at least you have an idea of what it will look like. Sometimes images I love in black and white fall totally flat when I start adding color.

I was able to come up with a dozen ideas for the cover. These are messy and probably a bit hard to read, but is there any that catch your attention? (Click the image to enlarge)