I won SCBWI Midsouth Conference Poster Contest!

I packed my bags and headed to the Midsouth SCBWI Conference last weekend. I had a wonderful time.

A new part of the conference this year was a poster contest for children's book art. The conference faculty chose the one that they felt looked most like the cover of a children's book and mine won. How exciting is that!

There were a lot of beautiful illustrations at this conference. Those of us who had attended last year's conference and had met with the Art Director, Laurent Linn, have greatly improved our portfolios based on his articulate suggestions. It's so encouraging to learn at these conferences what makes strong illustrations for the picture book industry and to see other artists grow. I can't wait to see next year's artwork after meeting with Victoria Jamieson this year.

SCBWI Midsouth Conference

This past weekend I attended the Midsouth SCBWI Conference in Nashville, TN. This region seriously puts on amazing conferences! Here are some of my notes:

Bruce Coville (author of more than 90 books)
I've loved Bruce's books that I've read and listened to. He's such a super dynamic and animated speaker. If you ever get a chance to hear him, go, go, go!
HA! WA! YIKES! If you can get all three of these reactions in your reader, you've written a great book.
HA! Kids love humor. How do you get a laugh? Use one of the following words: fart, booger, butt, naked, etc. But the best laugh is one that comes from the story itself. For example, a bully gets puts into his place.
WA! An honest tear. Easy tear - kill the dog. But the best tear comes from the story itself. For example, tears of joy when something so wonderful happens.
YIKES! Kids love scary books. The best scary is when a character you love is in trouble, emotional peril.
Use sensory details to sweep you into a scene. In any important scene, use 3 of the 5 senses.
Make a good story a great story by making your character face a tough moral choice. The question kids have is not, "Do I want to be good?" but rather, "Who do I want to be like?" Provide role models.
"Sometimes I write a fairytale because it's the best way to tell the truth." - C.S. Lewis

Victoria Jamieson (designs picture books, middle grade, and YA for Greenwillow)
Victoria has a website with her own illustration work, and she has a fun picture book coming out next summer, Bea Rocks the Flock!
She prefers illustrators to send in postcard samples of their artwork, not envelopes that she has to open.
Have a web portfolio where she can find more of your work, and she can print it out.
If you like a particular subject or type of book, do at least 3 illustrations like that for your portfolio.
Victoria showed us some picture book dummies which I found very helpful since I would like to write and illustrate my own picture books.
She talked about Darcy Pattison's Narrative Arc Formula:
This is a story about ______________________________
Who more than anything else wants __________________
(Alternate: Who more than anything else fears_________________)
But can’t get it because of these complications:
(Alternate: But has to face it because of these complications:)
UNTIL (climax/resolution).

Amalia Ellison (Assistant Editor at Abrams)
Why have an agent: Agents protect you in ways you don't realize until it's too late.
If you don't want an agent: query the assistant and associate editors and editorial assistants if they have aquiring ability. They are the ones who will be passionate about your books and will work on building a relationship with you because your success means success for them.
Amalia prefers email submissions with manuscripts as attachments (go green). If she feels your writing is great, but it's not what she's interested in, she'll pass it around the office. Amalia loves mysteries, math mysteries, and humorous adventure books - so do I! She was quite funny and a good storyteller.

I had a portfolio critique with Victoria Jamieson at this conference. Last fall, I had portfolio critiques with Laurent Linn from Henry Holt and Elizabeth Parisi from Scholastic, and I've been putting into practice all that they said about art for trade book publishing. I feel like my artwork has really grown over the past year, but I know I still have a lot of growing to do. I was excited to see what the comments would be at my critique this year, because most of the illustrations in my portfolio are new. There was one piece in my portfolio that an Art Director had said was my strongest piece two years ago. That was one of the only two illustrations that Victoria told me this weekend to take out of my portfolio now. How encouraging! What had been my strongest piece two years ago is now my weakest piece! Most of my new pieces are stronger, so that verified my growth as an artist. Yay!
These two illustrations Victoria pointed out as being some of my strongest:



Harold Underdown and Alexis O'Neill also spoke at the conference. If you're interested in writing or illustrating for children, I highly suggest digesting all of Harold's website and checking out his book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Children's Book Publishing. Also, join SCBWI and go to some of these amazingly helpful conferences!

Illustration Friday "Island"

This is a color comp I'm working on for one of my own picture book manuscripts, and it fits the Illustration Friday theme since little brother discovers big sister's island of vegetation in her bedroom.

This, of course, is just a messy color comp, not the finished painting, but I've been getting frustrated over it trying to get the colors and composition to work together. I was hoping to have the painting finished before the SCBWI conference I'm going to next week, but I doubt that's going to happen with all my other illustration work right now and with my main computer in the shop. But perhaps this illustration will end up falling into place... I do like some areas of color in this.

Check back after next weekend for my notes from the conference.

New leveled reader series

This series of 6 leveled readers that I illustrated for Seedling Publications has just been released! The colors printed exactly how I expected thanks to my new monitor.

These are all copyrighted 2008 Seedling Publications. Do not post these images anywhere. Thanks.

5.5" x 8.5" Postcard Mailer

Click on the image to see it larger.

I'm getting ready to do a mailing to art directors and editors at publishing houses I'd like to work for, and I've created a few different options for the front of my 5.5" x 8.5" postcard. The back of the card shows a couple characters in multiple poses that are sample interior black & white illustrations for a middle grade novel. Front 3 shows a sample middle grade cover using the same characters that I used on the back. I'll send Front 3 to those who don't work on picture books, but stictly publish chapter books/middle grade/YA.

My dilemma is what to send to those who publish both picture books and middle grade. Front 1 and Front 2 show my Peter Pan illustration and an illustration that will be in Highlights in the December issue. The Highlights illustration would work fine for picture book editors, and the back of the card shows middle grade illustrations, so both picture books and middle grade would be covered in one card. The other option is to send Front 3 to everyone who works on middle regardless of whether or not they do picture books too and just target middle grade right now. What do you think? Show both picture book and middle grade samples on one card or just focus on middle grade for this mailer?

Illustration Friday - "Sail"

It was smooth sailing for this year's Christmas pageant.

This is the front of a Christmas card design I'm working on that will be licensed for Christmas 2009 to Christian Collection. Typically they have me design about 1.5 years ahead of the holiday for cards. You can find of more of my cards on their website for this Christmas: www.christiancollection.com

Peter Pan

A bit of fairy dust, a good thought, and POOF! You could fly too!

Last week I read Peter Pan as part of Jacqui Robbin's Remedial English Lit Summer Project. Here's my cocky, young Peter.

Happy Fourth of July!

So, this is a bit belated, but I hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend (if you live in the US). My husband and I spent the weekend helping some friends move down to Texas where we used to live. It was fun to visit old friends, but it was quite a drive - 15 hours of driving each way! Whew! It's a good thing we love being in a car together and listening to books on CD. We listened to Tears of the Giraffe, which was wonderful, and we listened to Whiskers of Evil, which had an interesting plot, but the writing went off into needless tangents and should have been cut in many boring places. It also used Bible verses completely out of context, which annoys me. So I don't recommend the second book, but the first book is a great read.

Moby Dick

I just finished reading Moby Dick as part of Jacqui Robbin's Remedial English Lit Summer Project, and man, if that book was published today, I'm sure most every editor would have cut it down to at least a quarter of it's size! Chapters upon chapters upon chapters of whale anatomy and characteristics - oy!

One of my favorite characters was the little ship-keeper boy, Pip, so I did the character sketch of him above. Here's a section of a scene from Moby Dick about Pip:

"Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?”
“Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whaleboat. Pip’s missing. Let’s see now if ye haven’t fished him up here, fisherman. It drags hard; I guess he’s holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off we haul in no cowards here. Ho! there’s his arm just breaking water. A hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off—we haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir, sir! here’s Pip, trying to get on board again.”
“Peace, thou crazy loon,” cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm. “Away from the quarter-deck!”
“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,” muttered Ahab, advancing. “Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?
“Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!”
“And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through! Who art thou, boy?”
“Bell-boy, sir; ship’s-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip! One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high—looks cowardly— quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip the coward?”

Stuff about me

The Picture Bookies interviewed me here: http://www.picture-bookies.com/KristiInterview.html