Sweet Square #3

Black & white (marker) for today's Sweet Square. This gave me a chance to try something out in a mini format in a little bit of time. Check out the Month of Experimentation on Diandra Mae's blog if you're interested in joining in on this adventure.

Sweet Square #2

Second day of Sweet Squares. Acrylic, marker, collage. Having fun.

Sweet Squares

What better way to get into the back-to-school spirit than an online challenge? Inspired by Melissa Sweet at the SCBWI Conference in LA, Diandra Mae has started the MONTH OF EXPERIMENTATION over on her blog and it sounds like a great opportunity to me. Click over to Diandra's blog to see what it's all about. The basic idea is to start the day with play. I did my first 3X3 "Sweet Square" today.

These "Sweet Squares" offer an opportunity to do anything-- use new materials or new combinations of materials. Just try stuff out in a small format quickly. Today I used acrylics with black marker and some collage. I hope to do a ""Sweet Square" everyday in the morning to get my day started. The key is to have fun and experiment without judging or pushing oneself. Who knows where these little experiments can lead? I don't know but eliminating the pressure to produce "perfect" work for my portfolio seems like a good place to start.

Thanks so much to Diandra Mae for cooking this up.

Summer time is the right time for... sketching

Just this past June 21st, SCBWI chapters all over Europe (and beyond) participated in a Summer Stolstice Scrawlcrawl. Out here in northwestern France, Sue Porter, my daughter Gemma and I did our part. You can see our blogpost with sketches and photos here.

Now that I'm planning a visit home to New York in August, I remembered another summer sketch experience at The Frick Museum. They offered free entry for Sunday morning sketch sessions. I wanted to go and needed a sketch buddy so I nominated Gemma.

She was pretty comfortable sitting around at home but was happy to come.

Gemma warmed up a little.

Dana too. We took a quick stab at the architecture.

Then we zeroed in on the plants. I liked the leaves and light.

What I especially like about Gemma's sketch is that she found patterns right off and accentuated line.
Nice composition too!

Gemma has grown to like these very public, "in front of everybody!" outings. This year she's looking forward to it. So am I.

The Frick has free admission evenings too, complete with docents giving great tours. If you're in NYC this summer, hope to see you there.

12X12 Halfway There Party!

I’m trying to eek out an entry for the 12X12 in 2012 Halfway There Blog Party. The problem with going (almost?) last is that I’ve had a chance to see what all those other Partiers have done (great stuff!) and I’m drawing a blank.
 

Hmm. Still thinking…

Luckily, I had a little more luck coming up with picture book manuscripts. At the halfway mark, I can honestly say that I have six first drafts completed. Number Six was under the wire too— completed it on June 30th.

I’ll spare you the reasons (excuses?). Some months have been very organized and some less so. June was one of the latter (started a new job). But thanks to the 12X12, I was motivated to get something on paper. So for the first time, I wrote a first draft in bits and pieces. I usually like to write the first draft in one go but I had to write it on the fly this month and it really wasn’t so hard after all. A couple of paragraphs in the dentist's waiting room, a few more waiting at my daughter's ballet gala, recharging in my favorite café... I had time to think about my ending without stressing, do a little research, figure things out. This story, like the other five I’ve written this year (plus the seven written for NaPiBoWriWee) will need lots of revision. That’s okay. I’m looking forward to it. Once the first draft is down, the fun part is making it better and sketching out characters.

I’ve been having a great 12X12. Thanks so much to Julie Hedlund for dreaming this up and to all the 12X12ers who are such a supportive, interesting, inspiring group.

Party On!

Easing into the Day

Sometimes I finally get around to buying something or other I need and it brings me an inordinate amount of pleasure. Take my new toaster for an example. I went toaster shopping with my teenager and she wanted one that was very sleek and stylish. It looked like this:

It was a good toaster but too Darth Vader for me. It made me remember how, when I had my first apartment in New York City all those years ago, I put in a black and white checked kitchen floor and wanted eveything to be either black, white or red. I was young and I liked the clean geometry and sharp colors.

We kept looking and I fell in love with this little baby:

Not nearly as impressive but I thought I could face it every morning while I eased into my day. It looked like a cloud to me. I'm not a big fan of anthropomorphic toasters in general but this one also reminded me of the Pillsbury doughboy or a tooth. Mostly a big fluffy cumulus cloud though.

I'm not exactly sure what all this means about the march of time (didn't want to say "getting older") but I can see that I've exchanged some of my hard edges for less exact boundaries. It's all good; we change and evolve continuously.

And to show you I haven't completely lost my edge, check out the racy kettle I just bought:

This color is called "cerise" which means cherry and the whistle on this baby could stop traffic.

Have you treated yourself to something simple lately that makes you inordinately happy? If not, do!

(Sketches are all done in acrylic except the two kettles left and center--pencil and marker.)

The Whole Story with SCBWI France

This is a flyer that I created for the SCBWI France Spring Atelier. As Assistant Regional Advisor of our chapter, I organized this event for our picture book writers and illustrators.

The Belgian publisher, Mijade was presented by its founder and editor, Michel Demeulenaere.  He was a bookseller specializing in comics and children's books before he followed his dream and created Mijade. Michel’s talk was so interesting because his point of view of children’s publishing is very personal. He owns the company and has his own idea of what this all means. He ran through submission guidelines as that information is on their website. For illustrators, they have very specific artwork requirements : an illustrator would probably have to create some pieces to satisfy them. Michel also talked about the books they publish and what kind of stories interest them (not message-driven and with some humor). Mijade prefers to work with illustrators and writers on a regular basis if possible— he is sincerely concerned with his collaborators’ ability to make a living at what they do. As part of his powerpoint presentation, he showed us actual earnings for the author/illustrators of certain books over time. Eye opening! Diane Meirlaen also of Mijade, added details about the sales aspect. And they brought a bunch of their books and let each attendee pick one out to take home. Wow!

Next up was Sue Porter a member of SCBWI France and an author/illustrator with a long experience in picture books. Sue is currently finishing up a book with Mijade: PAPA SE MET EN BOULE. Her segment began with a presentation of her and Michel’s collaboration on this project. She explained a bit about the process of taking an idea (that she had about 25 years ago) to words to pictures and a dummy book and then submitting it to Michel. This was still just the beginning. Several months and 22 pages of email later they are almost done. Another eye opening presentation for our members— the realities of bringing a picture book to the world. Later Sue gave the group an idea of her career: starting with beautiful early work and how it evolved as she grew as an author/illustrator thinking more and more about the child reading the book.

All this was followed up (after lunch) with a workshop on using photo references to grow ideas. Sue has inherited the picture archive compiled by Faith Jaques and first bequeathed to Janet Ahlberg. She brought us just a sliver of this huge collection to peruse while trying out an exercise on creating characters and getting to know everything about them.

The SCBWI France Spring Atelier was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday. The members who attended left buzzing with excitement and ideas (and a new Mijade picture book!). Big thanks to our extremely generous faculty, Michel, Diane, Sue; and our Regional Advisor, Tioka Tokedira for all her help as well as The Marymount School for hosting us in their beautiful library.