clumsy

An oldie for this week's Illustration Friday. I wish I had time to do a new one, but it's looking to be a busy week for me. This was a little experiment in adding some realistic objects in with some illustrated ones and it wasn't so easy, as I had envisioned it to be! That's why this was a one and only little experiment. I admire illustrators that can do this kind of thing well, like Lauren Child, but I don't think it's my forte. It fits the theme well and is kind of funny, so here it is again.

I'm working hard on getting some of the sketches from my dummy book colored in time for the SCBWI conference in April. As some of you may remember, I was recently involved in a SCBWI event called the Great Critique, where I shared my dummy book with fellow authors and illustrators. The most important message I came away with from that was to edit. Everyone felt the story was too long. So, I went back to the 'ole keyboard and cut and reworded, with the help of my friend and mentor Karen Schmidt. She gave me such great advice and encouragement to keep going.

The other thing I came away with was I needed to do some of the pages in color. None of the people that attended the critique had ever seen my work and I neglected to bring anything with me that showed my style. So, that was my fault, I'm still learning the ropes in the 'ole children's publishing world. There are a lot of rules and things to remember, it's a bit crazy sometimes.

Anyway, I won't be able to show my whole dummy book at the conference, but I am going to be able to meet with an publishing house editor or well known illustrator and show some of my finished pages.