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Well, I’m back. Thanksgiving is over. Let the holiday crazy-season begin!

I had high hopes to share some plein air pictures from my Thanksgiving trip to visit family in Deep Springs, California, but chilly, windy weather and a rather nasty cold kept me from painting. So, here’s a little painting done from a photograph that captures the essence. This spring-fed lake was fringed with salt flats and a marsh.

In other news, I’ve had a few requests for prints so I’ve finally added some new ones to my print shop, including some of the pages from The Story I’ll Tell and some landscapes and other miscellaneous illustrations. You can find links to each print on the prints page or you can directly visit the Square shop by following this link. Square works like an online store and accepts credit cards, but if you prefer Paypal, just send me an email instead.

I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season so far and staying warm and sane.

It’s Friday! According to the random number generator at random.org, the winner of the print is:

Congratulations, Anya! Email me with your address at jess (at) jessicalanan (dot) com. Thanks to everyone who participated, and have a great weekend.

Earlier this week, I received this e-mail from a good friend of mine, Maggie Suisman, asking how to balance marketing work with making work. I think this is a question that many of us ask ourselves, so I thought I would share a bit of my own experience.

Hi Shadra!
I just saw your article on your blog “Just Keep Working”. You were so honest — and how helpful to be reminded that I am doing this first and foremost because I love making art. My summer break from teaching has begun and I am diving into the submission process for my dummy, Aysa Reads and my general portfolio. I have a few questions I thought I might send your way in case you might have a moment to share your thoughts. One is when a creative art director or other people at publishing companies say they are interested in looking at artwork (such as Chad Beckerman does in the 2014 SCBWI list of publishers) should I send in tear sheets or should I print the whole dummy and send it to people who do not provide an email address?

Secondly, how do you divide your time between marketing and creating new work? I feel like I could spend all of my time trying to find a publisher but perhaps it’s better to move on to the next project and keep updating my portfolio and making a new dummy.

Though everyone will have a different answer to this question, here are my thoughts:

Hey Maggie,

It’s great hearing from you!

In my experience when a creative director says they are interested in looking at artwork, that primarily means tear sheets. You can send a query letter along for the dummy. I would clearly label the samples from your dummy so that they know you write as well as illustrate. Art directors are typically not interested in seeing dummies because they are not the ones who would work on a story with you. In a smaller house, however, you may find art directors with a bit more say on the editorial side as well.

I would save your dummy for editors.

I wish I could say I don’t market anymore now that I have an agent, but that is only partly true. Lori, my agent, handles the promotion at this point, but I still do a ton of marketing for the books. I spend time mostly sending postcards to schools, libraries, and bookstores. I try to  that type of work in the evenings after my studio day is complete. Labeling and stamping postcards is a great activity to do in front of the television (or in bed). As far as new work goes, since I am working on books, I do spend most of my days making new work. I keep a mandatory eight-hour studio schedule, typically 9-5, but in some cases, the time gets broken up from 11-7, 10-6, etc. and most days, I work well past my 8 hour schedule, especially in the summer when I am not using so much energy for teaching. I also work on my writing alongside illustrating other people’s stories. The most frustrating part of it all is having many ideas bubble to the surface but not being able to work on them immediately because of other projects and work. I still keep notes on those ideas and try to revisit them later.

I don’t get to do much personal work these days, but I do try to sneak in at least one piece of my own in between book projects…just to stay sane.

Yes, you should absolutely work on more projects instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket. I submitted four or five stories before I sold a manuscript. Looking back on those first attempts, there are a few ideas that I do want to revisit, but in some cases, I don’t have the energy to deconstruct and approach them from a fresh perspective and before they can be published, I can honestly say they need more work.

I would also just make more images for fun. I didn’t get my “big break” until I abandoned the idea of making “sellable” work. I became more playful in the images I was making and I stop putting so much pressure on myself to make perfect art. Doing so opened up a whole new vocabulary for me and helped me tap into the fun of art again. Those images were the ones that excited publishers and helped me get my first book.

Even my first sold manuscript came from playing. I watched a commercial that I loved and wrote a story in response to it. It wasn’t highly personal at the time but I think that’s what made it successful. I wasn’t taking myself so seriously.

I hope that helps!

All images © Maggie Suisman. You can see more of Maggie’s work at www.maggiesuisman.com.

Just like Claire (below) and the others, I created an image to represent my work for our latest postcard promotional. We chose a Valentine's Day theme so you will see lots of love and hearts and pinks and reds in our images.

Please take a look at our bio's here and visit our personal sites to see more about us! Thanks for visiting!

Below is Illustration For Kids‘ latest postcard promo! (I put it in a vertical format for better sizing on the the blog.) Please have a visit at our group website and check out the individual illustrator websites, blogs, FB, Twitter pages, etc. Thanks!

Time for another IFK promotional mailing. This time our theme was "a rainy day." I'm so lucky to be a part of such a talented group of artists.

Hi all y’all. I hope you are enjoying spring (those of you who are north of the equator). The trees around here are finally getting around to leafing. Soon enough it will look all springy and then summery and hopefully warmth will follow. I myself have had it with winter. Bah!

The above is the  image on the spring promotional postcard mailer that Illustration For Kids (the illustration group I am a part of) recently sent out. The entire front of the mailer (with the all the images) is below. Check out our group blog for more details from the illustrators themselves in regards to our respective illustrations!

After some back and forth, I finally dececided on the illustration I wanted to use as my new promo postcard. I finished this piece in the wee hours of Monday morning. I was kind of surprised I sat here Sunday night and worked on this. I rarely paint on Sunday […]

Spring is here!
Wishing you feelings of renewal and happiness this time of year.

Below is my illustration for our IFK fall postcard. I have also included some earlier color versions and rough sketches and ideas working up to the final piece. I obviously decided to use a bear as the main character early on in the process. I changed the color background to blue to add more contrast when there seemed to be a lot of yellows and oranges on the other IFKer's images.





My blog & website

Below is our group promo for Valentine's Day/Winter which went out last week.

Many thanks to Eszter at Hatch Design in San Francisco for sending over this promotional piece for the firm. The birds are letterpressed and screenprinted onto egg carton material. The wife and I (and the cat too) had a great time putting this together.

We are gathering items for our new series on promotional goods from designers and design firms. This is the first part in an ongoing series. If you would like to contribute, please email me.

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Westvaco Inspirations #210 c1958

Westvaco Inspirations was a promotional journal produced by the Westvaco Corporation, formerly known as the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company. The purpose of the journal was to highlight the printing processes and quality of paper achieved by the Westvaco paper Mills. Bradbury Thompson (1911-1995) served as designer and editor for over fifty issues of this publication including the issue featured above.

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This week we're blogging about our process or how we go about creating our illustrations/art. Usually, I do all my work--from the sketches to the final piece--digitally in Painter X (though sometimes I'll do thumbs on paper, if I decide to work outside my studio). Below is the process I went through to create the illustration for our recent IFK winter/Valentine group promo. The image on the lower, left is a grouping of thumbnail sketches. I did at least twice the amount that's shown as I try to encourage myself to come up with many ideas before I pick something to go with. In this case, after considering many concepts, I decided to go with a group of kids making a Valentine poster (rough sketch, lower, right)


Then, on to creating the final art. Below, left is most of the inking for the piece. I do all the elements in layer (e.g. each child, the poster, and the background objects are all separate layers) so I can move them, resize them, or even ditch them if I need to. Once the inking is done, I move on to coloring, which I also do in multiple layers. The background color, the kids' color, the poster, and the objects all are on their own layer. The color layers will be underneath the ink layers so they don't cover the ink layer. I have several favored brushes I use for colorizing, like oil brushes, chalks, and acrylic brushes. Once I've completed the piece, I clone it so it's flattened. And that clone is my finished illustation (bottom, right).

Below is our IFK group postcard that went out a few weeks ago with a Halloween theme. We really have a fun time pulling our promotionals together!

We opted to do a Halloween theme for our fall group postcard mailer. My contribution is below.