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Midsouth illustrator and Regional Illustration Coordinator shares her process of illustrating with clay in the first of a two part interview over on Once Upon A Sketch.com, a blog full of tips and info for children's market artists. Go check it out!

This week we have the very talented illustrator Mary Reaves Uhles. I know you are going to enjoy your visit with her. Mary has worked for over a decade doing illustration for children. Her pieces have been featured in books and magazines around the world. Prior to beginning her career as a freelance illustrator, Mary worked as an animator on projects for Warner Brothers and Fisher-Price Interactive. To this day her work features a cinematic quality essential to bringing characters to life. Her illustrations have been featured in multiple publishing showcases in the South and she was featured in the 2005 edition of SmartWriters.com New Voices Exhibition. Reproductions of her work are currently represented by ZaPow Gallery in Asheville, NC. A PAL member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Mary lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee.

Here is Mary and her Process:

This is a piece I did for Somersault Magazine. I start with a thumbnail sketch that is pretty loose usually its only about 2 x 3 inches.

The purpose is to just get the “major players” in the right composition. Then often I will scan in this small thumbnail and enlarge it in photoshop to the correct size. If I feel I need to refine the sketch more I’ll print it out from the enlarged thumbnail, trace over it on a light table and refine it that way. I don’t always do that step because I actually try to avoid tracing over a sketch more than 2 times – I think it drains the life from a sketch – but I did with this illustration because there were a lot of characters to include:

I trace the sketch onto the painting surface using saral paper, which is a kind of carbon paper. If it’s a very loose sketch that I’m transferring then I refine it directly on the painting surface. I paint on both hot press and cold press illustration board depending on what the assignment calls for. I used to paint almost exclusively on hot press Crescent 215 board, until earlier this year I was given an assignment where I had to make the illustration look like a 1930′s WPA poster. The hot press just couldn’t capture this, the slick surface causes the paint to pool up. So I tried cold press and just loved the richness of the color. I had already decided to update my portfolio for this year’s SCBWI LA Conference with 5 new illustrations and decided to create all 5 on cold press Arches 140# paper.

Anyway once the drawing is on the board, and I have refined it there as much as I want, I do what I call a “tone map.” I really believe that it’s the lights and darks in a piece that create the drama and sense of story so I go over the whole piece in graphite trying to bring out the real darks and lights, then its much easier when I go back with paint to know where to go heavy. I’m in the middle of the tone map here:

I”m used to painting watercolor on hot press which means that you can’t really build

For En el Campo, Harcourt Reading 2009. The story of a hispanic family and their farm.
Mary Reaves Uhles

By Mary Reaves Uhles
www.maryuhles.com

Y'all missed a really good lecture with Emily Jenkins last night. Not you, Tim Bush. You've been extraordinary about attending these things. And Sergio Ruzzier and Tomek Bogacki, two of Ms. Jenkins' collaborators, BOTH showed up. I know a lot of authors who never even meet their artistic brethren and here Ms. Jenkins managed to conjure up two in a single night. That's half a sandwich shy of impossible. Her talk had all sorts of new information in it too. The difficulties that come with trying to photograph your cat. The fact that her illustrators have the eerie ability to place Ms. Jenkins' husband in their books WITHOUT having ever seen him. The title of her picture book coming out in March 2007 (which I begged on bended knee for a copy of, much to the dismay of my boss). Her newest title What Happens on Wednesdays, which looks good too. The only flaw with it is that every time I see the cover I think to myself, "What happens on Wednesdays STAYS on Wednesdays".

By the way, former Spring Lecturer Meghan McCarthy has just been interviewed at 7-Imp and they somehow or other managed to charm a kick-ass picture out of the lovely lass. It'd be a shame if you missed it.