Today we have the renewal of the word "Pioneer" because I just finished this and by gosh I'm posting it. Now usually the new IF word is posted on Friday so I thought for sure I would at least have five minutes of fame from this by posting it on Thursday evening, but NOOOOOOOOO!...just call me trailblazer...
When you purchase an item from my
store, 10% of your purchase price will be donated to my favorite animal charities;
Last Chance Animal Rescue and
Horses Haven, both in lower MI. Which charity the donation goes to, will depend on the item purchased and I will love you forever from the bottom of my little black heart. They deserve a chance too.
Grab a cup of coffee and take a long luxurious gander at my website ArtQwerks
Hello guys! I have finally completed my website re-design and right on my target date of Nov. 1, 2009.
Thank you to all who helped me out during the creative process. I couldn't have done it without you.
Hope you guys like it. Enjoy.
http://www.mitchlana.com
Autumn leaves are brilliant waves of red and gold and brown.
I ride them on a gentle breeze from town to town to town.
Sometimes I need to PAINT with real paint before I finish an illustration in the computer. In this case I used hot press illustration board to begin a sea scene for a project I am currently working on.
I like to be able to use my whole arm ( and soul) when I am painting and my sketches and preliminary paintings are usually done on a rather large scale. They will be reduced in the computer to the correct size for the project underway.
I used Dr. Martin's inks and some transparent acrylics for the first stage. Along with that combination I also used a house paint brush, a fan brush and some more conventional sable brushes.
After photographing the preliminary painting I transferred the image to my computer and completed it in Painter. The advantage for me is being able to get darker layers in place without having to wait a day for paint to dry.. and if I don't like a layer... I whisk it away.
In addition to transferring the painting to the computer I was able to stretch the entire image horizontally to accommodate the size I wanted to work with for this book.
If you look carefully you might be able to find two very recognizable constellations. Did you find them?
Olive's in a pickle
She needs a dime or nickel
Something to subtract
from a piggy always packed
Alas today she's finding nuttin'
Just one lonely orange button.
After receiving a few emails from illustrators and friends asking what kind of things I did to get my recent assignments I've decided to make a blog post on the subject. I still find it very useful to read how other illustrators promote themselves or what steps they took to go from unknown to getting their foot in the door, so just thought I'd add my own story here from start to finish.
In the beginning I was terrible, and I knew it. I had been trained as a fine art painter and knew how to paint what was in front of me. Painting from the imagination is a whole different ball game. I also knew next to nothing about composition. It was just....ghastly.
So...I practiced---a lot! I have painted probably hundreds (thousands?) of paintings, many of which were done over and over to 'get it right' (and will never see the light of day). Looking back over my work, I have improved greatly - I just didn't have the chops at all when I started. And I was not a natural.
I went to the library constantly, checking out tons of books by my favorite illustrators for both inspiration and to learn from them. I accumulated some serious late fees (oops).
When I started sending my own stuff out, I got lots of rejections and only a couple notes saying they kept my work on file. This continued for a couple years more - --I didn't know that this is the norm and that I just had to hang in there and be patient. It's hard not to take rejection personally!
Finally, my illustrations started to improve. A kind illustrator friend of mine took me under her wing and told me about Cornell and McCarthy and how great an agent they were. I held my breath and sent my best pieces to them, all presented in a folder with matching cover letter etc. Weeks later, they accepted me! Hoorah! I was over the moon.
Almost another year went by and I still didn't get a whole lot of work, but this was expected. I was a new artist and there was also a slump for just about every illustrator I knew.
Finally, I began receiving a steady stream of educational work. It was an excellent way to get my foot in the door and get a feel for how the publishing world worked--and it was fun! Almost 90 percent of the projects I illustrated never got back to me in print which surprised me. I guess since edu publishers are working with so many artists at a time they would lose a lot of money sending everyone copies of their printed work. I often bought my own books if I was able to find them.
I started to set my sights on being a trade book illustrator and eventually, an author as well--but I put all my energy in the former trusting that the other would possibly follow if I was successful.
Many more years passed (for the most part, documented in this blog) of struggling to improve my art and find my style. Since I wanted trade books, I started adjusting my art to look more like trade book art and found that I was more comfortable with that direction and enjoyed it immensely. But I still needed to put in more practice. And I did--I was hard on myself, doing scenes over and over again and probably being overly critical. I kept posting to my blog on a regular basis and found the community of other blogging children's illustrators to be extremely supportive and encouraging. I would post something, see the responses, and it was sort of a ping-pong effect of bouncing ideas back and forth. I commented on other artist's work as well. We had all found a little nook away from the mostly solitary atmosphere of being an illustrator.
As my art started improving and reaching a level that I felt was 'ready' I started chomping at the bit to get my first trade book assignment. I began doing anything and everything that would get my art out there. Sure, I have an agent promoting me, and I can't begin to express how much Cornell and McCarthy have impacted my career, but you also have to do your part (I believe) and I started sending out extra postcards, updating my website often, and advertising on childrensillustrators.com (I have received many assignments through them, they are absolutely the best out there).
Still....nothing tradebook-like.
Argh! What was I to do? Then one day my agent offered to send out a Christmas card to everyone on their client list with my illustration on the front. This is something they do every year and each time, they pick an artist from their group for the job. I jumped at the chance! Coming up with a design was difficult - I was putting a lot of pressure on myself and you know how that goes. I couldn't come up with anything I liked - I filled a sketch book with ideas. Finally, with the suggestion from my very smart agents, I went back to my favorite subject--PIGS! The ideas finally flowed and I came up with the two designs in this post. The image of these two pigs was finally chosen.
After the card was sent out, it was a quiet holiday season, then boom! January/Feb hit. I started seeing some big publishing companies on my website stats, and .......they were googling my name to find me! Wowee! Even if I had not received any assignments, this in itself was something to celebrate! They had shown interest.
A few months following this initial reaction, I received three trade books in a row and most if not all said they had seen and liked the Christmas card. It just goes to show a couple things--draw what you enjoy drawing the most and your best work will no doubt come out, and two, you never know which sample will get the attention of art directors so keep sending them out.
In the end, you have to love what you do. It was a long road of five or six years before I came to this point in my career, and had I been wishy-washy about being an illustrator, and not put everything I had into this dream, I wouldn't have made it this far. The love for your craft gets you through the hard times and the rejection letters, and the months without work. Then one day, unexpectedly, things begin to finally fall in place (and they will if your heart is in it) and it's really quite a feeling when that happens. I still have lot of hard work, learning and practice ahead of me of course - and always will, because the art of the picture book is a complicated and beautiful thing.
So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. :0)
People always ask me where ideas come from, for stories or illustrations. I usually give a variety of answers based in fact or fiction, but the real answer is ideas come from everywhere, and from nowhere. What makes an artist an artist, what gives them vision, is that they have trained themselves to investigate the nowhere to see and hear from all that surrounds them, to absorb it, and translate it back.
Suspense writer Stephen King, in his book “On Writing” says that ideas are constantly flying around in the sky, and it’s the writer’s responsibility to reach up and grab them. To illustrate that point further in terms of sketching characters to life, I had drawn a character called “Sister Cat” for one of my picturebook manuscripts about kid ghouls. Sister Cat is a sister to the main character, Velma the Vampire, although the biological conjuring of that relation is left a mystery. They are ghouls after all, and anything is possible. At first, Sister Cat looked like this…
Cute in pink, but a little too cat-like to be a real sister. So I waited for something to fly by..
Right before Valentines Day, during a break from the drawing board, I scanned a picture of a swan into photoshop, and did a little conjuring myself. The end result shown here is 2 swans forming a heart….and if you look long enough, a cat appears in the middle, a cat with wings. On Stephen King’s advice, I reached up and grabbed it…
And Sister Cat in action with Velma the Vampire…
Sister Cat came from nowhere, but there she was, staring at me all the while, waiting.
An aMUSEd vision…it doesn’t get better that that!
Terri Murphy
For the book dummy I am preparing I have created a slightly new cover design.
I am currently revising, adding, subtracting and polishing my book dummy for submission to ONE favorite publisher. They require exclusive submissions only. Since I have been at this for such a long time, the wait time for them to respond is worth the effort.
In the process I revised the cover art to fit in with the tone that the illustrations have now taken on. I also restructured some of the events to give the book a more organic flow. At 32 pages there are 25 full color illustrations to be presented along with the front and back cover. Some of those are double page spreads, so I'll share one of them here along with the new cover art.
©Ginger Nielson 2008
Since I am always pressed for time, opportunities to work on my own projects are few and far between. So, I've decided to make time. I'm hell bent on getting this book dummy done, even if it means adding a 25th and 26th hour in the day that didn't exist before. Everything posted below was done on a moleskin journal or scratch paper while waiting; lines, stop lights, drive throughs, etc. Instead of counting ceiling tiles, why not make use of the time we spend waiting for things in day to day life to complete projects that we can never seem to get to? The only way to get large projects like these done and on the desks of editors is to chip away - each chip counts!
As I've stated before, the polar bear story is being put on hold for a while since I found a book similar in plot and character (darn it darn it darn it!). So, my next story is "Something Weird At My Lunch", one which I ended up liking better anyway, so I guess it all works out in the end. Whether this book gets published or not, I'm really going to enjoy the process of putting the mock-up together and seeing the words and pictures come alive.
Thumbnail for a double page spread idea for pages 2-3 while waiting in Banana Republic. Moleskine journal.
Manuscript with notes on page divisions, illustration notes, and ideas for wordless spreads. These notes were written in while waiting for a friend at the mall.
Character designs for main character -drawn at the gym.
Double page spread thumbnail for pages 4-5. Possible character design for teacher. Moleskine journal.
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Today we have the renewal of the word "Pioneer" because I just finished this and by gosh I'm posting it. Now usually the new IF word is posted on Friday so I thought for sure I would at least have five minutes of fame from this by posting it on Thursday evening, but NOOOOOOOOO!
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Great style, great coloring. Love the expression, both on the face and in the pose. This has got to be the blog with the most personality I've seen yet! =D
What pluck! Love your renewed pioneer and your sense of humor!
is it wrong that I'm attracted to her?