Terroist attack

Children's book author & illustrator Linda Ragsdale was shot in the back in the terroist attacks in India and underwent surgery. After the attacks, her husband flew to India on an emergency visa to be with her. Linda's such an energetic and fun woman; the first time I met her she bought me dinner and we laughed all night. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers for a quick and full recovery.

Highlights Magazine

I'm so honored to have illustrated a wonderful Christmas poem by Eileen Spinelli in this month's issue of Highlights Magazine. Highlights - "the world's best-loved magazine" - how sweet is that!

The only thing I didn't realize was how dark and dull my illustration would print on magazine newsprint. The top is what it looks like in the magazine, and the bottom is how it's supposed to look. Hmmm... I'm hoping for more assignments from Highlights, and I'll be sure to up my brightness and colors next time around.

Illustration Friday "Pretend"

This is one of the card designs I did for Christian Collection's Christmas 2009 catalog. I know it's a whole year away before you'll be able to buy the cards, but that's how timing works for when they need the final art!

Trade Book Sketches

What am I currently working on? A sweet, trade picture book for Shen's Books. Here's a lil' sneak peek at the main character. I'm still in the sketch phase. It's so much fun to create a personality, a tiny life that exists in this book.

Operation Christmas Child

The thing I love most about this time of year is a program called Operation Christmas Child. You take an ordinary shoebox, fill it with toys, school supplies, hygiene items, and a note, take it to a local church who will send it to Samaritan's Purse, who will carry your box around the world and give it to a needy child. It may be the first present that child has ever received. What a tangible way to show little children that God loves them, and they are precious in His sight! If you're interested in filling a shoebox, you can go to the Samaritan's Purse website to see where in your city you can drop off your box: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC They collect boxes until Nov 24, so that they still have time to ship them around the world before Christmas. Here's a video about the program:



I love this ministry, and try to do as many boxes as I can each year! Please join me.

Illustration Friday "Strings"

When I saw the Illustration Friday topic of "strings," I thought of a tightrope. And since I have penguins on the mind, I decided to draw a performance poster for Mr. Popper's Penguins.

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.