Today I tried using only digital color, no watercolor.
Let’s just say I love my brushes.
This little man might need a name… Sebastian?
After Sebastian splashed out of the tub, he pressed his rippled fingers against the window.
He had definitely been in the bath too long. His mother told him this would happen.
But Sebastian never listened.
This week I actually followed the #twoodle directions and picked two random words suggested by someone else. The Hubble image in the background is the Tadpole Galaxy. It was fun but now I have to get back to work on my new MS! The baby will be awake in T-minus 40 minutes, give or take… about 40 minutes.
I’m finally making headway on a stalled piece of writing! HOORAY! I’m off to capture chapter 20…
Alicia Padron, a Venezuelan picture book artist, started a weekly #Twoodle that is pretty fun! All week long artists can suggest words to be brought together in a piece of art, and on Wednesday the #Twoodles get posted.
This week even amongst the hubbub of riots and possible recounts she’s twoodling. I think that’s pretty inspiring!
My words for the week were quail and safari, and the rhino is from a Durer engraving. You can see all the other twoodles on twitter!
Okay, so this is a long way from urban. I started out with a sketch for a little snail hiding out from the sun on a hot sidewalk in the shade of a dandelion. That was urban. But that was also two days ago. How I got here, even I don’t know. But I like it!
Do we like it with or without Ladybug??
Deborah Halverson, writer, editor, and blogger extraordinaire, is giving away a free picture book edit to celebrate the release of her new book, LETTERS TO SANTA!
This week’s Illustration Friday has me wishing my kids would sit STILL.
It’s a rainy day. Why can’t they just sit in the fluffy chair with a book and some hot chocolate? Why must they insist on getting so muddy, falling down so much, and climbing so high? If it were up to me our day would be like this: sip, sip, flip, flip, snuggle and doze.
It is not up to me.
Hop, hop, crunch, crunch, cackle and zooooom!
Last weekend I had two critiques at the SCBWI Writers’ Day at California Lutheran University, an in person portfolio critique with Whitney Leader-Picone, and a written manuscript critique from Jen Rofé.
I’ve done a few manuscript critiques before and the hard part isn’t the same as it used to be. The hard part used to be trying to make a good impression on someone I just met, or at least to not seem insane, while my whole body became an overcrowded, overloud, overwhelming thumping nightclub. Now the hard part comes later, but more about that later.
My Portfolio: Whitney had some nice things to say about my watercolor technique, the emotion in my work, and my cute animals, and she was also nice about the things in my portfolio that still are not working, the proportions and physical mechanics of my human figures, some pieces that lack narrative, some pieces that are too conceptual for the children’s illustration market. She suggested a figure drawing course, IF I want to get work illustrating people. That doesn’t sound so hard, that sounds fun. The hard part for me is deciding whether I SHOULD do that. Should I focus on what I’m already doing well? Should I focus on animals? If I do it wouldn’t mean simply culling all the humans from my portfolio, because some of my more narrative pieces show people. What it really means is starting over. Starting over is hard.
Just right for the market.
Not right for the market.
My Manuscript: Jen wrote some nice things about the manuscript I submitted for critique, a contemporary fantasy chapter book. She liked my voice, she liked my characters, she liked my writing, but she wasn’t sure, based on my synopsis, that my plot was going to sell. She noted some easily fixed, “inorganic,” character reactions. She suggested trying to build up the MS, and see if it could be an early middle grade novel. Based on the First Pages Panel at Writers’ Day, where none of what the writers thought were chapter books convinced Molly O’Neill, Whitney Leader-Picone, or Jen Rofé that they WERE chapter books, I thought this might have been her nice way of saying: “This isn’t a chapter book.” Rats. I thought it was a chapter book, but if it’s not, building it up would be pretty easy too. So here is my plan. I do think my plot could sell, but that my synopsis isn’t selling it. That’s where I’m going to start over first, a new synopsis. Then fatten it up, make it more juicy. Revise. Revise. Revise. Then I’m going to submit it, and submitting is still hard.
Baxter Julius Castor fidgeted with his lucky blue marble. He tried to think of some way to hide his crooked tooth.
Should I turn my head? he wondered. Mom says I have a nice profile. If I look down would my whiskers hide it? Or, I could hold my tail in front of my face – very casually.
But when it was his turn, the photographer said, “Stand straight! Tail-up! SAY TREES!” and it was over so fast he didn’t have time to hide his crooked tooth.
When the pictures came back from the printer Baxter was surprised.
He was smiling.
Even among my jovial set of gentleman, all our old amusements, bold jokes, fine food, and heady talk of high politics, could no longer divert me. It was a sad truth of our set, that I was miserable among them.
I longed only for Lorraine. Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorraine.
Boom.
Boom.
Bye bubs. Mums has some reading to do.
