Up in the Attic Lately

The Liebster Award

2012-02-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

Four people honored me with the Liebster Award in the last couple of weeks and each time it was such a pleasant surprise. It’s awarded to blogs with less than 200 followers to generate attention and create new connections. Liebster is German for dearest, beloved or favorite.

When you get one you add the logo to your blog, thank the person who awarded it and link back to their blog. And then give a Liebster to 5 bloggers by leaving a comment on their blog.

Big thanks go out to Penny Klostermann, Angela Peña Dahle, Jennifer Kirkeby and Lynda Shoup for brightening my day with a Liebster.

And then there’s that matter of five random things about me.

1) I’m a New England/New York City girl living in France.

2) I won the National Grand Prize of the Cappy Dick contest in the Sunday comics when I was 10 years old: a set of the World Book Encyclopedia AND atlas. I still remember what my entry looked like (word puzzle and drawing).

3) I used to live in Little Italy, NYC over an Italian caffe. It was noisy.

4) I used to live a stone’s throw from the Château de Versailles and worked in what was, in Louis’s day, the stables of the king as an English teacher to architecture students.

5) I volunteered at a restoration in the French Alpes of an old fortress called La Redoute Marie-Thérèse … for six weeks. If you see a crooked little stone wall there, you can be sure that I made it.

Without further ado I will pass the good vibes along.

Juriko Kosaka is an English language enthusiast who loves drawing and painting. She’s such a dedicated sketcher of things like food, people on the Tokyo subway, desktops. Right now she’s posting a Drawing-a-Day. You will love Juri's blog and tweets in English and Japanese.

Jean Reidy is the author of picture books Too Purpley!, Too Pickley!, Too Princessy! and Light up the Night. She is the champion of worthy causes. Sometimes she has giveaways on her blog where you can win a manuscript critique. What are you waiting for?! Go look.

Elizabeth Stevens Omlor’s blog is called "Banana Peelin': The Ups and Downs of Becoming a Children's Writer" and she’s gotten the down and dirty from the likes of Tara Lazar, Iza Trapani and Katie Davis among others. Find out what faux pas they made on their journey in the publishing industry. Hurry!

Lisha Cauthen says "I write YA novels for boys that girls like to read too. About normal kids who have abnormal things happen to them. Let’s call it horror, for now," on her blog "The Imaginal Realm." She is funny and knows a lot about this writing stuff. She’s an active member of SCBWI Kansas and edits their Sunflower Scoop. Her tweets @lishacauthen are legend.

Sylvia Liu is so great at passing along helpful information. She writes and illustrates for children and is interested in things like "kraken, flotsam and robots." I’m going back to her blog to find out what kraken is. See you there!

New Bird in Town

2012-01-12T12:19:00.000-08:00

I have to admit something. We moved in September so technically, I’m not Up in the Attic Lately anymore. I am living in an apartment duplex but I’m still at the top of the building though, okay?

With a move comes changes. It’s more urban here and bigger. There’s a bus system that runs until 8:30 pm, lots of library branches and a Fine Art Museum.

The change I’ve been thinking about lately is the birds. In the old house, in the attic I worked under the roof. I heard the birds scurrying around, their claws scratching the slate. Singing meant chickadees and sparrows. A repeated phrase of several notes spelled the longing call of my favorite blackbirds. And the cooing of the turtledove couples was either soothing or annoying, depended on the day. Squawking signaled the turf wars fought by crows in the giant oak tree.

The crows! I didn’t love them or hate them yet I couldn’t remain indifferent to them. They traveled in packs and dominated. They couldn’t share like those little songbirds. It had to be their oak tree. Their TV antenna perch. Their driveway. Their chimney pot— where they ate plums from our tree. I know because sometimes they’d drop one and boy, did that make a racket when it smacked the fireplace screen.

In this new place, I don’t hear the birds much. The double glazed windows have us sealed up tight. No spaces between roof slates to let in sounds. But I see the birds more. Mostly seagulls. Lots of gliding swooping seagulls. We live on the coast. Water is everywhere, ports and bridges abound. This apartment is surrounded by lots of open air space and has tons of windows. Birds dive onto the roof— close to the windows below the ledge then land out of sight and sound. The close-up views of them mid-flight is new to me. Yesterday, when I turned towards the window in the kitchen, I startled a seagull who had landed on the sill. This could not have been easy because seagulls are very big and the windowsills not so big. I was startled too. Daphne Du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock and "The Birds" came to mind.

New Year and new town. I realize that it takes me awhile to get into a new place. I take small steps. Learned the bus lines. Joined a gym. Found a marché. Chose a café with excellent café crème as my hangout. Got a library card. Doesn’t seem like much but I also realize the value of small steps in life— and in my work. There’s been a lot of talk online about New Year’s resolutions as well as anti-resolutions, post-holiday slumps and procrastination. I’m familiar with these things but I’ve got to keep moving things forward. I’ll take small steps on some days and hope for more on others.

The view has changed. The birds are different. Onward ho!

Chugging along with PiBoIdMo

2011-12-09T05:14:00.000-08:00

Sketch made in a café for PiBoIdMo Day 26. Who knows where it will go?

This past November was a busy one. I took part in Picture Book Idea Month (PiBoIdMo created by Tara Lazar) and as ARA for SCBWI France worked on its Regional Conference set for December 2nd and 3rd. I wrapped up PiBoIdMo and headed off to Paris on the very fast train (TGV) from Brest at 6:42 am in the pitch black— a rather lonely time of day at the train station.

I stared out the window at the dark landscape speeding by and thought back on my 30 ideas and could not remember one single distinct idea. I decided that they must really stink if I’d already forgotten them. It was a little sad but somewhat typical of me so I took out my PiBoIdMo notebook and a printout of the December 1st Post-PiBoIdMo blogpost "Pat Miller Follows Through" to change my mindset. Pat advised this newly graduated class of 2011 PiBoIdMo’ers to turn back to our ideas (oh boy! I was already one step ahead) and look them over each day, adding to each one— plot points, characters, conflicts.

Reading the idea from Day 1 I remembered that very day— out in the sunshine taking a walk with my daughter to get to know this new place where we’d recently moved. We checked out the neighborhoods, found the local library (only to see a poster announcing that it had just closed for renovations), kept walking and came upon a row of semi-detached houses. This reminded me of a trip to Ireland where I met my Great-Uncle Willie Green and he proudly showed me a mural of the town when they lived in rows of thatched roof cottages. Then I got the day’s idea.

The train chugged on. I continued to plow through my ideas still feeling sleepy and still thinking the ideas were a bit stinky (not stench-level stinky but lacking). I kept reading, started to add a bit here and there, to really think. The time passed as the TGV zipped along. I looked up and the sun was rising. And that’s all it took to feel better about my ideas— reading, thinking, adding, a little sunrise and VOILA! I will keep going.

I think that’s what I like best about PiBoIdMo— every time I think I won’t have another idea, I do. Then I think I won’t have another good idea and I keep trying, making better. All the support and solid advice PiBoIdMo provides makes it so much easier.

I hope to carry what I’ve learned with me all year long and bit by bit turn a few of these ideas into something more.

Thanks to everyone (especially Tara)!

Pumpkin, moon, rainbow

2011-11-24T13:36:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating!

It's business as usual here in France but we managed a little celebration.

I made pumpkin soup and pumpkin flan but I had to kill this beauty for it:

I felt so bad I had to take a few photos.

The turkey that I bought at the market was fresh.

When I bought it the poultry farmer told me it'd keep for at least a week

in the fridge because she just killed it the day before.

So I wasn't the only one killing stuff for this meal. It was delicious.

This was the moon about a week ago.

Hard to see here but it was eerie and beautiful.

From the windows of this apartment (we've only been here since September)

we have lots of uninterrupted views.

Here's another view on a stormy day.

I spliced two photos together so you can see the whole rainbow.

Big beautiful sky. Ever changing.

That's all for now.

Summer Inspirations

2011-06-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the SCBWI European Union Scrawl Crawl and my daughter's prolific blogging, I decided to sketch and put it up here. Right away. Not after thinking and procrastinating and whatever! It's a Sunday morning warm up sketch of my latest purchase: old buttons. There's a "brocante" (antique (-ish) shop) nearby and I 've been going there for years, picking up odds and ends. It's owned by a friendly woman with a good eye and a great talent for display. And so, here's the sketch:

You may be wondering what a "Scrawl Crawl" is and rightly so. It's a day out, roaming around, sketching from life. I had a wonderful time with Sue Porter and her dog, Maisie; we went to Carnac and sketched the prehistoric stones.

It felt so good to draw outdoors from life, getting out of the attic, away from my desk, the dummy book I'm trying to complete and the computer screen. I got back into the drawing process-- it's way different sketching from life than pulling reference pics from search engines. Everyone knows that but it's easy to get caught up in work and not look up or out. I'm going to try to keep sketching for fun because it is just that.

Spring and/or Winter

2011-03-24T04:44:00.000-07:00

Seems like some of you woke to snow today. Winter sure is hanging on. But rest assured...

...spring is on its way. The plum blossoms have already "snowed" down on us in my backyard. It's been springing for a little while around here. No real snow at all this year!

These are images I created for Illustration Friday a few weeks ago for "layer". I did the snow-surprised birds first. Then I took the compost out back and realized that my snowy image had nothing to do with my reality. The blossoms were out on the trees; it was cool and sunny. I thought to myself, these beautiful petals will be gone soon--I love when the breezes start blowing them around. And voilà! Inspiration for my second image !

Enjoy!

Spring Sketch

2011-01-30T05:41:00.000-08:00

A collage sketch for those of you wishing for an early Spring:

Hang in there!

Winter Gardens

2011-01-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

Hyacinths are ordinary plants but come January when all is cold and drab, I need a few to buoy my mood and remind me that more clement times are coming soon. I bought some right around the new year. Here’s the progress from bulb to flower:

Too bad I can't share the beautiful scent because it is a big part of the plant's charm. It fills the room but is never cloying or overpowering. Right up here in the attic I have my own little winter garden and the hyacinths are doing all they can to spark creativity. The colors (violet mixed with blue) and the scent wake me up.

Another way to lift the winter spirits is the classic standby: take a walk. Sunday, my daughter and I were at a loss as to where to go so I had a bright idea. After seven years in this town, we’d never been to the cemetery. I realize this is a good thing but I was curious and it gave us a goal. Short term goals are important. (Cemetery + goal = lifted spirits. Hmm. Hope the only "spirits" lifting will be ours.)

We found it by following a path of winter trees. I love winter trees and have been painting them on and off for a few years now. These particular trees rekindled my desire to paint my trees so I knew it was a good omen. (I’ve since started two new paintings.)

We saw all kinds of French grave sites ranging from very old to very new. French cemeteries are different from those I knew in New England. There’s no grass, just gravel. We missed the grass but in the old section we came across some interesting resting places like this one with lots of moss and enamel mementos.

And as we approached the exit, we saw this very old stone slab with a grassy moss growing in the inscriptions.

So we got the grass we were missing after all.

What do you do to keep your winter garden lively?

2010-10-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

The Thinking Chair

A post in honor of Picture Book Idea Month - November 2010 #PiBoIdMo

Productivity is everything. I produce therefore I am.

But before I can crank it out, I've got to think it out.

Thinking looks a lot like not doing anything at all. I know this because I've been caught thinking more than once in my life. It wasn't pretty. "Are you okay?" "Why don't you go out and do something?" A couple of years of that and even the most intrepid thinkers join the ranks of the doers and start accomplishing something. Anything. And learn to think on the sly while getting stuff done.

But sometimes I really need to sit down and think. I know my last post was "Stand Up and Get to Work" but this is different. This is about sitting down and getting those ideas that will lead to work.

I set up a chair just for thinking. It's a little kooky but it's working so I'm sharing. Don't worry about going out and buying a chair just for thinking. You probably have something on hand that would work out just fine. Look in the garage or attic. Shopping for the perfect chair would only serve as procrastination. Plus spending money might set up an obstacle to sitting down and doing some serious thinking.

My Thinking Chair is just a canvas lawn chair souped-up with some pillows. The great thing about a lawn chair is that I can fold it up and prop it against the wall when I need the space.

Having this place devoted to thinking helps me focus and validates the process. When it's time to start, I sit myself in the Thinking Chair. I keep a pad nearby. I keep coffee nearby. I think. I calm down and don't become overwhelmed by what is or isn't happening. This chair is where I give myself the chance to work things out. It only takes a few minutes of thought to fuel a good work session. Once I've allowed myself the time to think, to figure out what I want or need to do at that moment, I'm free. My mind is allowed to work. It's amazing what is already in our brains. Thinking is like rummaging through drawers and finding all kinds of great things we forgot we had. Sometimes I'm amused at what my brain spits out when I let it take over, when I get out of it's way with all my demands to get something done. It's like a patient friend that guides me, "You knew it all along. You just needed a chance to put it together."

The Thinking Chair is like a flag to alert the entourage: when they see me in it, they know that short of a fire or gunshot wound, I am not to be disturbed. This is serious business: brain cells are synapsing perhaps even reproducing. (I don't know if that's true but it could sound impressive in an authoritative tone of voice.)

Thinking gets a bad rap. It resembles sleep or spacing out. You run the risk of being called "lazy". Ugh. The "L" Word. But dare to sit in your Thinking Chair and think.

I think therefore I am therefore I produce.

I want to wish everyone a great Picture Book Idea Month. Here's to many thoughts sprouting lots of ideas (at least thirty!). And I want to thank Tara Lazar for thinking it up and bringing it all together for a second year.

Stand Up and Get to Work!

2010-06-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

I used to paint in oils a lot and my paintings got bigger and bigger. Then I started working in gouache in an attempt to do more sketching and experimenting instead of the very finished work I was doing on canvas. When I moved house, I had an attic space to work in but it wasn't very big so I opted to continue in gouache as I really didn't have the space for backing up and looking at my work (plus the smell and mess wasn't working for me either).

So I began painting in gouache on paper at my drafting table and worked smaller and with more detail. I painted a series of paintings of views of the airport and this style captured these moments. It worked. Eventually I found myself hunched over my paper on gouache going further and further into details. But I wanted something different for a picture book text I wrote and have gone through a series of attempts, trying to recapture a looser feel that I felt the story needed and that I'd be able to carry through 32 pages.

My last blog post shows one of the character studies from those attempts. I wasn't happy with the work then I began thinking about oil painting. I've realized that I miss the physical aspect of working in oils; standing up while I paint at an easel, moving in front of the painting and backing up. I decided I just had to stand up and paint in gouache over my drafting table. I'm using bigger brushes and a kid's set of big gouache pastilles on regular old sketch book paper. The big tools make it hard for me to get into details. The thin paper forces me to not go back in too much because this quality can't take too much going over. And standing up keeps it big: gestures, modeling. I'm physically engaged with what I'm doing by backing away.

It's harder to do tiny details standing over a piece of paper with a big brush. I was especially tempted to sit down for the little girl's face but I had to resist and I'm glad I did. I'm much happier with the result.

I think backing off and restraining our need to tweak it just a little more is important in lots of aspects of life. Writing while standing might be a bit much but perhaps the same idea can be applied by writing uninhibitedly: no editing that first draft until it's done and been left alone for a week or so. Or writing in a notebook outdoors instead of on the computer in the office for a change.

Now I'm going to get up and get some work done! What do you do to shake it up and push it to the next level?

********
D'abord, je veux m'excuser pour le dernier blog où dans mon hâte j'ai oublié d'écrire un petit mot pour mes amis francophones.

Aujourd'hui, je voulais simplement faire voir encore mon travail de recherche des personnages. J'ai changé ma façon de peindre un petit peu, secoué mes méthodes afin de faire ce que j'ai envisagé. Les habitudes s'installent et parfois j'ai l'envie de m'en débarrasser donc au lieu de rester assise à table de dessin, je me lève et je peins debout avec les pinceaux plus gros et la peinture en pastille énorme (destiné aux enfants) avec un nombre limitée de couleurs. Je utilise un papier de bloc sketch. Comme ça, j'arrive de porter les gestes moins minutieux, de limiter les détailles et d'éviter le désir de faire les images trop réalistes.

Qu'est-ce que vous faites pour remuer les automatismes dans votre travail ?

NaPiBoWriWee and Beyond

2010-05-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

Last week I participated in the National Picture Book Writing Week invented and organized by the dynamic Paula Yoo. I did it last year too and I'll do it again next year. It's like everything else; the more you do it the better you get at it. I wrote 7 first drafts of 7 picture books. Might seem easy but the hardest part at times is sitting down, taking out those ideas that have been rattling around in the dark corners of the brain and putting them to the test. Do they hold up on paper? Not always but that's okay because then you can move on. And the other ideas, the ideas that start to look promising— they need revision but that's okay too. I'm always happy when I do something, move it all forward even a little bit and in the context of this challenge it was fun. Paula was rooting for us and provided tons of support and advice. And then there were the other participants: I met some great people in the 'comments' on Paula's website and on twitter. I attempted new things and learned some too. What's not to like?

This week I'm getting back to what I was doing before the NaPiBoWriWee madness began. Some painting and a picture book dummy. I revised the story in places so that requires new illustrations then I decided I needed to rethink the couple of paintings I had already done for it… hmmm

This is another study for the main character.
I'd changed my mind while doing it so this is really for working things out.

Now I'm going to go back and start over. Don't worry! I will figure this out. I'm pretty sure. :-p

This is a little painting of a subject I've done before as an attempt to develop an illustration 'style'.

I've since bagged the idea of working that way… got to keep it natural, me. So I redid it as an exercise to get back to where I was before I started fiddling… That's what you see here. And I'll probably do it over again.

Next week my daughter will be taking a big trip with her Latin/Greek class to Greece and so I'll have lots of uninterrupted time to work. Let's all keep our fingers crossed I use my time very wisely!

Snapshot

2010-03-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

This is a little gouache I just did to send to my mother for her birthday, painted from an old photo from a batch she sent me. I love the intimacy of the pose. I love all the memories it brings back. I remember the furniture and objects in the living room and even that wood paneling that was so popular back then. It makes me think of the person taking the photo too; my father. I see him with an old rangefinder camera taking pictures of all five of us kids growing up. I like that he saw my Mom and sister sitting there and felt that the moment was worthy of a photo. This is life. All those little moments.

I hope Mom likes her gift.

Une petite parenthèse pour faire voir un tout petit tableau à la gouache que j'ai peint pour l'anniversaire de ma mère. Enorme nostalgie pour moi. Les petits moments de la vie qui sont quand même poétique...

Thanks for passing by.

Emotion

2010-03-11T07:51:00.000-08:00

This is a character study for a picture book I wrote. It isn't definitive; I need to take it a lot further. What emotion do you think the girl's face and posture express? There is no right answer. I'd just like to know what you think.
Thanks!

Kid, Goats, Pigs: Kids' Illustration work

2010-02-15T06:50:00.000-08:00

A little show 'n tell!
This work is from personal references. (I can turn any kind of outing into a quest for illustration reference materials.)

First in pencil:

Another version in gouache:

This is a fast gouache that I went back in and touched up with pencil:

We named these piggies Pretty & Gorgeous!

It's good to be back at the drawing board. Now I need to work on some sketches for a picture book I wrote. And revisions to the text. And...

2010-01-26T07:08:00.000-08:00

I thought I was in a rut lately until I pictured that word in my mind and saw, well, a rut formed by, say a wheelbarrow wheel and realized that the rut came from doing something over and over. I looked it up in the Oxford American dictionary and it said "a habit or pattern of behavior that has become dull and unproductive..." and since I've been decidely unproductive but not behaving as I habitually do, that word did not really apply. I only wished I was in my lovely dull habit of painting and writing, productive or not. I wasn't doing anything. Blah. So I looked up "doldrums" and found that definition #2 applies: "a period of inactivity or stagnation." Ahh, I saw myself here. The first definition and synonym is depression but I wouldn't go so far as to say I've been depressed. Not in a clinical sense anyway. But I got to thinking some more (plenty of time for thinking when one is stagnating) and I realized that during these doldrums I was actually doing something and here is a list:

I thought about all the things I wasn't doing and wondered what would become of me.
That hurt my head so I slept.
I read The Twilight Saga, all four books so that, in the words of my Twilight-crazy daughter she and I "could be on the same page."
When I wasn't immersed in Bella's life of cataloguing the various facial expressions of Edward (he's got like a trillion different smiles each with a very different very deep meaning behind it), I was knitting. I was determined to use up all the odd ends of skeins dating back to my teen years (I kid you not) so I knitted a scarf for aforementioned daughter. I used up a lot but not all of the yarn.
Started knitting another scarf for no one in particular. I realized I enjoyed the lack of rules, the tiny decisions about which color to use next, just row after row of listening to the radio.
Read "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott and fell in love with it.
Started reading "Breaking into Freelance Illustration" by Holly DeWolf. I was keeping in touch with illustration at least!
I finally planted the three bulbs I sprang for during a school-trip fundraising drive. I'm now enjoying that tiny effort as they give off a beautiful scent.
When I finished all four Twilight books I started The Midnighters series by Scott Westerfeld. They were a gift and much to my surprise I was hooked and read all three. Fantasy isn't my favorite genre but I'm glad I tried it.
I have my doldrums to thanks for that.

So I didn't move those picture book texts forward, didn't revise that dummy book, didn't get moving on that illustration portfolio. Nope. But the doldrums allowed me to do a few other things and while I'm not saying I don't regret this period, because I do, I decided to stop being so hard on myself and tally up what I did when I wasn't doing "anything". And now I'm coming out of it. I've joined a new gym, have borrowed arm-fulls of picture books from the library and wrote about them in my reading log and I've taken out those texts and dummy book and will face revision.

So now I'm wondering, what do you do when you aren't doing anything?

Illustration Friday

2009-10-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

Topic: flying
“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand
and walk and run and climb and dance;
one cannot fly into flying.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the first time I've submitted to Illustration Friday even though I've enjoyed browsing their site for years. 'Bout time!

First Day on the Blog

2009-10-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

(this pastel is not from the attic or done lately...
just something from a long time ago to kick off this blog)

Welcome.

This is a new place for me to get out of the attic and show what I've been working on lately. I'm an English (as a second language) teacher/graphic designer/painter in France. I'm also an aspiring children's book author/illustrator. (That's a lot of slashes...)

This blog is for my illustrations. Please stop by and take a look at the work I post (studies, sketches and finished paintings). I'd love to read your comments and I'm sure that any feedback on my work will only help to improve it.
Thanks!
Dana