SCBWI Winter Conference Recap

Hey there everyone,

It has been a crazy, whirlwind, head-spinning sort of week and weekend. The head-spinning may have resulted from the all too dangerous combination of conference-overload and cold medicine. Yep, I got sick just in time for conference weekend. No worries, though. I powered through and came home with a journal full of inspiration.

My illustrator friends are scattered across the country, so SCBWI conferences have become a lovely sort of reunion. Two of my dear illustrator friends even bunked at my tiny apartment in Brooklyn.

 Pictured here with fellow Mentee, Maple Lam. (Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)

The first day of the conference was the Illustrator Intensive, and it started with an amazing presentation by Shaun Tan. He told us, "You know an idea is great when it starts to tell you what to do."

He showed some of his incredible drawings, 

and he even signed a book for me!

Floyd Cooper not only gave a talk but did a piece right in front of us!

David Ezra Stein talked about his inner artist and inner critic. (Inner artist pictured below.)

The Brothers Hilts talked about their recently published book, The Insomniacs. Check it out, it's amazing. I loved what they had to say about books as a whole: "The book as object is the art. That's what's going to be in 1,000 tiny hands and seen by 1,000 tiny eyeballs."

After and between all of the amazing talks there was time to hang with illustrator and Mentor, David Diaz and my fellow Mentees.

(Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)

I also got to hang out with the amazing gals from my Critique Group, Brooke Boynton-Hughes and Jessixa Bagley. 

Finally, at the end of the day, we browsed the Portfolio Showcase. There were over 200 portfolios! 

(Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)

The next two days of conference were chock-full and jam-packed with workshops and lectures, and Mo Willems took off his shoe.

A major highlight of the weekend was the Illustrator Social on Saturday night. Tomie dePaola came as a surprise guest to chat and hang out with us. 

Another amazing moment was the announcement of the Portfolio Showcase winners. Among them were two friends.

Jessixa won runner-up!

 (Photo courtesy of Maple Lam.)

And fellow Mentee Andrea Offerman won the grand prize!

(Photo courtesy of Maple Lam.)

The Mentees spent loads of time hanging out together...

 (Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)

especially in the hotel lobby.

 (Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)

And later in Debbie's hotel room,

 (Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)

we checked out Debbie's potato

(Photo courtesy of Maple Lam.)

and napped.

 (Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)

It was an inspiring and exhausting entirely excellent weekend. Many thanks to Lin Oliver, Stephen Mooser, and the amazing staff at SCBWI.

Stay tuned for two additional upcoming conference-related posts, Mentee Monday and journal doodles.

Snow!

Hey there blog-readers,

I hope all of you are enjoying a wonderful and bright holiday season. Today, we got our first taste of winter... it's snowing in Brooklyn! Weeee! Some of you might clarify it as "wintry mix" or "slush", but I'll take what I can get. Snow!!!!!!

And in honor of the snow, I thought I'd share a new piece from the season.

I'm excited to say that it was recently featured on Kathy Temean's amazing blog! She did a round-up and featured new work from many of her Illustration Saturday interviewees. Definitely take a moment to scroll through; there's some amazing work on the page. Thanks again to Kathy for the feature and for maintaing such an amazing resource for children's writers and illustrators!

Avocados are Delightful

Happy snow day everyone!

The weather-folks predicted a major snow storm here, of the school-closings-and-snow-days-for-everyone-so-let's-rush-to-the-grocery-store-and-clear-the-shelves-of-milk-and-bread-and-batteries variety. So here I sit at my little table in Park Slope, enjoying the snow on the trees (though admittedly there is a lot less snow than was predicted and likewise less than I would have liked... but SNOW!) and a cup of tea, and I realized that it would be an excellent day for a couple of catch-up posts. There is much to be done today (even though it is a day "off"), so we'll see if I have time for that second post. Perhaps I shall save it for tomorrow, keep you on the edge of your seat, mouth rounded in anticipation - whatever will she post!?

But alas, as usual, I digress...

Though it is snowy and winter outside, indoors it is all kinds of cozy and excellent... made even more so because of the lovely avocado and hummus sandwich waiting for me. If you've never had one, you should make one right now (except if you're snowed in... then wait until tomorrow) - it is a life changing sort of sandwich. Dead of winter doesn't exactly scream avocados; it's more of a time for the warm and hearty rather than the green and tangy. But I was inspired to pick up an avocado at the grocery store yesterday - no, I did not buy milk and bread... just an avocado - because of my gouache class this past week.

My fab Britishish prof assigned us to do small paintings of food. We're playing with using the paint to get fairly accurate renderings. This week, he showed us a technique of using an entirely magenta underpainting to get the shadows to pop. You paint the darkest shadows with the brightest magenta and use a lighter wash over the rest of the piece.

Magenta!

And then, once the underpainting is complete, you paint your other colors. I wish I'd thought to photograph it in process because it was sort of neat looking with just the avocados painted and this screaming magenta everywhere else. Anywho, it was quite fun to paint. I still have some finishing touches to do to complete it - touches within the salad, additional highlights, and of course the background - but overall, I'm pretty happy with it... and my sandwich.

Avocado Salad!

Seasons of Carl: The Last Project

Happy Winter Break everyone! (Likewise merry holiday season and happy nearly new year!)

While I am admittedly ready for a break, now that we're on holiday, I'm more than a little sad that my first semester of art school is over. The lightening-like speed with which it whoooshed by is mind-boggling. It was a crazy amazing roller-coaster ride of a school term...

And now it is done.

But I shan't dwell any further... adventures lie ahead... but before we move on, let's look at the last project of the term.

Carl's last assignment was to create a four-panel folding screen using Vivaldi's Four Seasons as inspiration. We were assigned our base material - a black board - but were otherwise free to use any method(s) of working. We also assigned a format - to divide each panel horizontally. The bottom half was to be a figurative piece using an object to represent the season. The top half was to be a non-objective (more abstract) representation using color and texture to show the season. Some of the project ideas included different bugs to represent the season (butterfly for spring, bees for summer, etc), trees throughout the seasons, animals, action figures, food, a year of Michelle Obama... we had quite a variety.

I was at a loss for a while. For a few weeks, I just played with materials trying to decide how I wanted to work and what I wanted to work on. Finally, I decided to go with my initial idea - to render a character dancing and represent the season by her movement. Spring would be walking, summer would move into something more animated - jumping or spinning, fall would be quieting down again perhaps yawning, and in the winter panel she would be asleep. Eventually I decided not just to draw four different characters, but do a progression that would span the entire width of the screen.

First I drew out my characters on tracing paper, so I could later overlap them and line them up as I went along. Then I transferred them to the board. Part of the initial progression sketch looked like this:

This shows midsummer moving through fall into winter.

Then I started to paint my composition. I did a whole bunch of tests using different materials for about two or three weeks just trying new things. You can see one of my test panels up top.

Filling more in:

Until I had all of my girls rendered:

Then I started to think about my non-objective element. I wanted it to have a similar feel to the bottom but still have a lot of energy and compliment the quiet. I decided to render each season the same way but change the colors to show the seasonal change. After another week of tests, I hauled out my paints and borrowed a toothbrush from a friend. (Yes I said toothbrush...) And just look at what a toothbrush can do:

I rendered the whole thing before cutting it up... admittedly a terrifying task. And when I finally put it together, it looked something like this:

Spring:

Summer:

Fall:

Winter:

And because it ended up as a three dimensional object, I decided the back needed something...

Detail: