@ Nashville Public Library: From Good Ideas to Finished Pieces

This month five Midsouth illustrator members were psyched to be included in a show at the Nashville Public Library's Main Branch displaying their illustration process from start to finish.

In the Nashville area? Here's a teaser of the display but it looks much cooler up close and personal in the beautiful downtown library.

Not in Nashville? Check out these talented artists' websites and blogs. After doing that you'll definitely want to make a special pilgrimage to Nashville just to visit the library before the end of May.

Susan Eaddy sets up her clay creations from Papa Fish's Lullaby:
See her website, www.susaneaddy.com, and blog and youtube channel.

Mary Uhles shows off her piece for the May/June issue of Ladybug Magazine. See her website, www.maryuhles.com and read more about her process here.

Cheryl Mendenhall really gives a behind-the-scenes look at her process by even displaying some of the tools she uses to create her illustrations. They're digital but you'd never guess without the Wacom tablet to give it away! See her agent's page here.

Doug Jones' great sense of humor is on display in this cute Easy Reader about a lost space alien, Once Upon A Planet. See his other cool cartoons at his website, www.dougjonesart.com and his blog.

Kris Sexton rounds out the pack with these awesome clay dinosaurs, models created for her picture book, Five Huge Dinosaurs. See more of her watercolor and Illustrator creations at her site, www.krissexton.com.

All five of us were incredibly grateful to SCBWI, Susan Eaddy, Kristin Tubb and the Nashville Public Library for letting us share a peek into what goes on in the life of an illustrator. 

Beyond the Grave - my cover process

Have a look at the cover for the illustrated middle grade novel, Beyond The Grave, written by Dotti Enderle and published by Magic Wagon available September 3, 2013. It's a spooky adventure novel about two boys who decide a graveyard is the perfect place to work on a particular class project. I wrote a blog about my cover process here as well as some of the interior illustrations here and here.

SCBWI Midsouth illustrator featured on Tennessee Crossroads

Hey, everybody, our very own Susan Eaddy was recently featured on Tennessee Crossroads! She talked about and showed the steps involved in creating her wonderful clay illustrations. It was a great interview! If you missed it, here's a link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLp1KPIwvwo

2012 Midsouth Conference Art Intensive

 Martha Rago, Associate Creative Director for Harper Collins was our fabulous Art Director at the Fall conference this year. Word of her reputation was widespread and the 10 person max for the Intensive was filled within 3 days.

She gave our Artists the choice of illustrating a spread from one of two manuscripts. Besides the manuscripts she supplied helpful tips for pacing and creating a rough dummy, as well as developing character studies.

5 weeks before the Conference, sketches were sent to her for review. At the end of two weeks she wrote each participant a private detailed letter of one or two pages, with encouragement and suggestions for improvement.

The day of the Intensive she critiqued each illustration in the group setting, incorporating her sketch feedback and other helpful advice that applied to most illustrations in general. Her comments were thoughtful, honest and kind.

 Here are some samples of those before and after sketches with comments. Many thanks to Martha for her expertise!

Mary Uhles

 comments were to connect the image more with the words. She could not tell which dogs were curly and which were burley etc. Think about  exaggerating the descriptions in the image. She also said push the interest of the piece - does it just have to be dogs running over the hill or is there a way to put in even more story?

FINAL

Cheryl Mendenhall- Thumbnails

Cheryl Mendenhall sketch

recommended that characters be made younger to fit the manuscript and target audience and clarify the setting for the right hand corner spot.

FINAL

Detail

Detail

Rebecca Rae Mudd

Comment was to simplify backgrounds and make children younger

FINAL

Susan Eaddy

Comments were that B.Bear looked kind of like a gopher with his skinny arms and legs. Lolly looked too old. Type needed to have more consideration in the page and illustration design

FINAL

Kris Sexton

Martha's suggestion was to make the girl look a little younger, and Kris loved running with her suggestion of adding fairy tale characters into the background, with maybe little bit of mischief going on. 

FINAL

Illustrator Workshop Update

The Midsouth Region was supremely fortunate to have Laurent Linn, Art director for Simon & Schuster, come to Nashville for a day long workshop in June.  

Here's how it worked:

The goal was to create a finished picture book illustration by going through a speeded-up version of the basic process an illustrator and art director go through when creating art for a picture book.

Laurent assigned a manuscript, and the artists worked up character sketches and a full page spread from anywhere in the book. He critiqued the sketches via email, and our illustrators followed his suggestions.

The day of the workshop, each artist brought the original illustration, after having sent jpegs so we could project the images on screen.

Using a handy-dandy timer, Laurent spoke for 15 minutes about each piece, telling us what worked, and what needed attention, and kept up an ongoing dialogue with the artist on display. He was honest and extremely kind, and with every critique EVERYBODY learned some new nugget about what goes into making a spectacular illustration.

It was a fabulous day for our Midsouth Illustrators!

Here are some of the finals:

Mary Uhles

Meridth Gimbel

Danaye Shiplett

Steven Knudson

Kris Sexton

Cheryl Mendenhall

Wanda Johnson

Rebecca Rae Mudd

Illustrator Intensive at the SCBWI Midsouth Fall Conference

For the first time ever at the 2011 Midsouth Fall Conference we held an Illustrator Intensive.

Here's how it worked:
Six weeks before the conference, Jim Hoover from Viking Children's Books sent 2 unpublished manuscripts and let the artists choose to illustrate the first spread from either one. Some liked bunnies, some liked fish.

Sketches were sent to Jim and he provided in-depth feedback to each artist with suggestions for improvement. He spent time reviewing each illustrator's website and offered specific changes and suggestions related to their style. Then he suggested that all sketches and comments be shared via email so we could all benefit from seeing each other's comments What a guy! The artists were thrilled to get that kind of expert knowledge in this "round-table" critique style.

The day of the Intensive, everyone brought their final illustrations; we propped them up and the discussions began! For 2 hours, Jim told us what worked, what didn't, and why, all interlaced with funny anecdotes and gentle honesty. We loved him.

Here are a few of the final illustrations from the Intensive.

Mary Uhles

Kris Sexton

Rebecca Rae Mudd

Meridth Gimbel

Susan Eaddy
Video for this Bad Bunny

'Strangers in the Stable' ... my latest book illustration projet completed.

I don't post here often, because my schedule is filled with more than children's book illustration, however, my latest project was for a Christmas early reader, and now that the publisher has sent the files to the printer, now I can share.

This was my first kid's book illustrated purely digitally, so it was quite an experience. I normally only paint digitally for novels and some older kid's genres, like MG or YA (which are only sometimes illustrated).

Strangers in the Stable, by Jim Laughter and 4RV Publishing, is a charming twist to the traditional Christmas tale, which makes me doubly honored to have been the illustrator. Now, for a peek at the illos:

The stores and shops teemed with life,
and people lined up at tables in the marketsquare,
signed books, and paid money to
men in flowing red robes and shiny hats.

Finally, three more men entered from out
of the night. Kings, the people called them.
They carried gifts and laid them before the
child and his parents.

The kids got to know the young family,
and even Young Billy became friends with
Mary.

If you're interested in seeing the original cover I created for this book, and read why I changed it at literally the last minute, check out my latest 4RV newsletter post.

If your thinking on buying a few copies for Christmas, pre-orders are being accepted now on the 4RV Publishing catalog site.

Until next time,

Aidana WillowRaven

http://WillowRaven.weebly.com