InsideOut: The Loss

Howdy folks,

The lastest installment of InsideOut is up on the Forward's website and is in this week's print issue of the paper.

This week's piece is about grieving the loss of one's entire community and leaving an old life behind as one starts anew. Judy uses some wonderful images, using colorblindness and seeing colors in a black and white world as metaphors.

I started out, as usual, with a whole bunch of sketches. I played with themes of loss and loneliness and Judy's imagery and color.

The folks at the Forward chose the last sketch, emphasizing her isolation and loneliness, even in the midst of new discovery.

In my mind, the most important part of this image would be the use of color. My initial idea was to only render the sky in color - a vibrant, popping blue.

 This didn't feel quite right to me. There wasn't enough emphasis on the main character. She's having this moment of discovery, so perhaps she ought to be rendered in color as well.

Better still, but something about it felt a bit cold... so I added a warm tone beneath the black ink of the street.

This is ultimately what we decided to go with, but I also went a bit further with the color at the request of the art director... just to see what would happen. 

If the trees were green...

 Or one tree was green...

 Or the whole world was rendered in color...

This was a neat article to illustrate. The piece itself was touching, and the visuals in the text, exceptional. It's especially exciting when the imagery in a written piece practically begs to be illustrated.

Reworking a Character

Hey there folks,

I know that most of the recent posts have been for my editorial work, but don't think I've forgotten my children's book whatnot. Perish the thought!

I've been doing quite a bit of children's illustration - some work on a project I can't yet talk about as well as a bunch of personal projects. After returning home from the conference, I made a list of goals for the coming months. At the top of that list: revising and reworking. I decided to return to older projects - projects I've let sit for a while - and begin the long revision process. And I don't mean changing a comma here and there... I'm working on complete overhauls. First the text - scrapping manuscripts and rewriting from scratch. Then redoing the art - reworking old sketches, tossing said old sketches, and developing new scenes and new characters.

The first story I decided to tackle is an old favorite... one of my thesis stories.

The first order of business was to get to know my character again:

I did a whole bunch of sketches. Pages and pages. In some she's too tall, others too old, or too pointy, too round, too chin-y... and in others, just right. Somewhere along the way, a friend evolved. And finally, when I thought I knew her again, I did a full-color character study.

The Sun

Hey blog-readers,

The second article in the InsideOut series is live on the Forward's website! Check it out here.

InsideOut with The Forward

Hey there blog readers,

It's been a while. Apologies for the hiatus. Since returning from the conference, August has been an incredibly busy month. Ages ago, I hinted at a new project that I can finally talk about. I just started working with the Forward (or פֿאָרווערטס) on a new, bimonthly column called InsideOut. Penned by Judy Brown, the essays are wonderfully written pieces about life as a Hasidic woman and about Judy's very personal process of leaving the community. My work will appear alongside her pieces every two weeks - each month, one article in print and a second online.

The first piece appears in print this week, and I wanted to share a bit about my process. As with the last piece I did with the Forward, the medium and process are different from my children's work.

My favorite part of the process is the initial brainstorming. After reading the article, I sat down and worked my way through a stack of computer paper trying out ideas. Here are a handful that I sent in:

Each sketch dealt with similar ideas - being/looking/feeling different from or at odds with the surrounding crowd - but each had a slightly different emphasis. And, yes, I did send in that last "sketch" (I do use the term veeery loosely), but rest assured, I also sent in notes with those indecipherable chicken-scratch pencil lines.

After some discussion with the folks at the Forward, we agreed that the image that worked best was the  woman in front of the pantyhose display.

Once we settled on an image, I blew the rough sketch up to about 11x17, firmed up the sketch directly onto my good paper, and taped it to my board.

Final sketch

And then it was time to start adding ink...

Beginning ink

 Darker

Until I had something that I was satisfied with.

Once I was happy with the ink, I pulled the image off the board and scanned it into the computer. For this piece, I cheated a little bit... rather than handletter the packaging, writing "Beige" 64 times, I did it once and then copy and pasted it.

 Thank you Photoshop!

Next step, color! The most important color for this piece was clearly the beige of the stockings. It took me a while to find a tone that I liked, but after that, the rest was easy. 

Ta da!

The final piece

You can check out the article and the final illustration in this week's daily Forward or online here.

Many thanks to Naomi and Dan and all the excellent folks at the Forward and of course to Judy for such wonderfully written essays.

LA SCBWI Conference

Halloo blog readers,

Where to begin?

Four days, thirty-six pages of notes, a heap of new friends... The conference was a roaring whirlwind of a weekend that left my head spinning and sparks shooting out of my ears and fingertips. (This was very dangerous for my sketchbooks, but worry not, there was no lasting damage.)

Like last year, there were an astounding series of workshops and keynotes, from the heartfelt to the irreverent:

The amazing, Arthur Levine

The inimitable, Tony DiTerlizzi

Patricia MacLachlan

(you might remember this book of hers, Sarah Plain and Tall...) 

Melissa Sweet giving a painting demonstration

Jon Klassen (illustration crush!) talking about Harold and the Purple Crayon

Like last year, I attended the illustrator intensive:

Tony showing original work

(photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi)

Final panel (L-R, Tony DiTerlizzi, Melissa Sweet, Laura Godwin, Eugene Yelchin, Jon Klassen, Cecilia Yung, Rubin Pfeffer, and Antoinette Portis)

(photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi)

Like last year, I submitted my portfolio into the annual Portfolio Showcase, and just like last year there were over 160 incredible portfolios laid out on the tables.

At the showcase 

(photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi)

But entirely new this year, my portfolio won an award... !!!!! I was completely stunned. You can't tell from the above photo, but many of the portfolios on those tables were nothing short of breathtaking. I feel so incredibly honored to have been selected for the Illustration Mentorship program. A gigundo thank you to David, Pat, Cecilia, Laura, and Priscilla. The five members of the Illustration Board, each choose one portfolio, so I have four co-mentees who are all super talented: Jen Betton, Maple Lam, Karyn Raz, and Brian Won. I'm so excited to work with them this year!

With fellow mentees

(L-R, Jen, Karyn, Maple, & paper-Brian)

And then, you know the saying... all work and no play... this year's gala theme was the "Hippie Hop", 60s attire, tie-dye, gigantic afros, and flower tattoos encouraged:

Hippie Hop

(photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi)

At the party with two of my fave conference buddies,
Kathy-Ellen & Ashlyn

I know I keep using words like incredible and amazing and mind-blowing and head-spinning... but it really was. The conference is an extraordinary event with some of the most creative, encouraging, and kind people I've ever met. If you want to read more, there's some pretty good coverage of the conference here. (Not to mention, the two gals pictured above and I are featured in one of the photos.)

Talk about talented, hanging out with awesome, creative-types

(L-R, Christina Forshay, Maple Lam, David Diaz, me!, and Juana Martinez-Neal) 

(photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi)

Finally, I'll leave you with some work. Here's what my sketchbook/journal looked like.
Three of those thirty-six pages:

Conference high

Stampede

Morning blog-readers,
It's just about 6:30 on the west coast, and I'm about ready to head off to Century City for a weekend of workshops, key-notes, doodles, intensives, illustration fun, writers, editors, and a crazy, amazing, positively stupendous herd of picture book folks running around the Century Plaza. And I just might be ready. (I might also be carrying twenty pounds worth of postcards, promotional pieces, portfolios, business cards, and book dummies with me all day, but that's another story...)


But back to the business at hand... Conference! And illustration! I'm hoping to find a wee bit of time to post throughout the weekend, but to give you an idea of the schedule, today I'm going from 8-8:30 - and I do mean 8am until 8:30pm. Whew. 


But if I don't, I did want to leave you with a piece of art before the rush begins.


I finished this piece not long before I left NY... 

Bunnies & SCBWI

Hey there blog readers,

It's been a busy couple of weeks - between a job, a surprise party, conference prep, and the very recent possibility of some exciting new work, I've been running around a little crazy. (When I say conference, I mean the same little dealie I went to last summer.) But! Things seem to be mostly in order. The suitcase is packed, and with six freshly cut and taped book dummies, a newly loaded portfolio, and a blank sketchbook, I may just be ready to get on the plane for LA.

In the midst of all of the crazy, between scanning and printing and binding, there were a handful moments for some much needed doodling time.

I give you the ballerina bunnies:

Ta da!

Not sure where these are going, but you may see more of this little character after the conference.

Turtles

While we were away, I did a fair amount of aimless doodling. Mostly turtles, as it were.

Don't be surprised if you see more of this little turtle guy in the future...