New Year's Resolutions

Well it has been one year since I actively started blogging so I thought my first post of 2015 should be a review of 2014 and establish some New Year Resolutions.  In my very first post I stated that my aims were to document my quest of becoming a picture book Author and Illustrator, I still haven’t made it as an Author and Illustrator yet as it requires a lot of hard work, so this blog will continue along those lines again this year.

So what did I achieve last year? 

• I completed Dr Mira Reisberg's Children's Book Academy course on writing children's picture books where I came out with my best manuscript so far and an illustration for its first spread which went on to be selected for the 2014 SCBWI BI Illustration Showcase.  This was a goal I set for myself here. 
• I took part in Julie Hedlund's 12 x 12 challenge to write twelve picture book drafts in one year, one per month.  I didn’t quite manage twelve, more like six which is better than nothing.  It was really worthwhile doing it, the community there is great and they share their knowledge.  I’ve enrolled again this year too, at Gold level, eek!
• I successfully completed PiBoIdMo, Tara Lazar's Picture Book Idea Month which runs in November where the challenge is to come up with 30 picture book ideas in the 30 days of November.  So I have 30 more ideas in the bank than I did before.
• The most daring thing I have done this year was submit a manuscript to two agents.  One via a pitching webinar and the other via #PITMAD on Twitter.  Both came back as rejections, one with feedback too.  I’m not as discouraged about it as I thought I would be and I am looking forward to making more submissions soon.
• I’m still a member of SCBWI, the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators, and I attend my supportive SCBWI crit group once a month at Seven Stories.  Once of the group was taken on by an agent so I’m looking forward to seeing how that develops.
• I released a free Picture Book Template for Scrivener and an accompanying video on YouTube which have been well-received and they have certainly raised the profile of my online platform.
• I was a member of the CBI, the Children's Book Insider, a paid subscription website and Facebook group all about writing children's books.  I didn’t renew my membership this year, if I am honest their website was a bit of a let down for me as I found that lots of their pages were randomly offline and the Facebook group was mainly full of members’ self promotion.
• New web adventures have included a few of my blog posts being featured in the SCBWI British Isles online magazine Words and Pictures.  And I loved getting my weekly email from Kidlit411, it’s so full of useful information to children’s authors and illustrators as is KidLitTV (I had the honour of naming their programme “Storymakers”).
• Regarding learning and working on my craft I have been using Craftsy, Linda.com, Skillshare and Udemy videos and the brilliant Path to Publishing with The Plot Whisperer, Martha Alderson and Agent, Jill Corcoran.
• Oh I went to the hottest ticket gig of the century when I went to see Kate Bush at her residency at the Hammersmith Apollo.  It was so amazing and inspiring, words don't do it justice, I'm still thinking about it!

Kate Bush - Before The Dawn - 2014

My New Year’s resolutions are to:

• Improve my portfolio via my critical findings
• Write more manuscripts and improve my writing craft
• Increase the frequency of my blogging, post at least 18 posts this year.
• Submit to agents with an aim of representation
• Produce more videos and develop my YouTube channel 
• Read more picture books

I wish you all the best with your own resolutions and I hope to see you back here soon.

Video Training for the Aspiring Picture Book Author and Illustrator

Christmas is coming, what do you get the Aspiring Picture Book Author and Illustrator in your life?   How about some training videos?  Here are my recommendations:

Computer Boy by Claire O'Brien

Craftsy

The Art of The Picture Book by Shadra Strickland

I had never heard of Shadra before taking this course, she’s a Picture Book Author and Illustrator working in a realistic style and she is a great teacher.  She provides useful information that she backs up with demonstrations.  I like her character development, setting and using reference sections.  The most valuable advice she gives, in my opinion, is on the framing of storyboard thumbnails and how you should think about their intended destination, the finished picture book, and whether that is portrait or landscape.  She also provides common picture book dimensions, information I’ve looked for for a long time.  Although I haven’t submitted any of my own work, it looks like Shadra is quite active in the member discussions and provides feedback on work posted.  This is the best video course that I have seen on writing and illustrating children’s picture books!  Buy this class here.

Skillshare

Picture Books I: Write Your Story by Christine Flemming
I really like the Skillshare’s courses, they focus on real-world, creative skills rather than what buttons to press in software, I have just bought a year’s membership after paying monthly for a while.  Picture Books I: Write Your Story by Christine Flemming (12 Videos, 54 minutes total) is a good course with solid information.  The course is delivered through slides and references well-known books as examples of good practice.  There is a set assignment and you can share your progress with the group or publicly and receive comments from peers and Christine  The lesson on rhythm is factually correct but it doesn’t help that it is delivered in a flat monotonous voice (pot calling the kettle).  You will find all of this information in any good children’s book writing how-to book but if you’d rather listen to the information then this video is for you.  Christine also has a follow-up course on illustrating your picture book that I plan on watching too.  Sign up for Skillshare here.

Lynda.com

Lynda.com has a whole of host of courses from using software, photography, creative business, design and animation and they are all really well-delivered and very useful.  They also make documentaries that are inspiring.  Two that are of interest to aspiring picture book authors and illustrators are:

Creative Inspirations: Ed Emberley, Children's Book Illustrator is amazing.  I probably don’t need to tell you about his drawing books for children which is how I know of him.  I didn’t know that he also writes and illustrates children’s picture books, he’s published over one hundred of them.  This video presents his philosophies and practice via an interview, footage of him drawing and voice overs.  It shows his studio and working methods which are always fascinating for a fellow artist to see.  It also features his daughter, Rebecca Emberly, who is also a picture book author and illustrator.   My favourite quote from this video is when he says “I just felt like doing a children’s book” and of course it was published!

Interactive Book Designer by Stacey Williams-Ng

Picture book apps on the iPad and tablets are difficult to ignore these days whether you like them or not.  If you want to venture into picture book apps then this documentary is very inspiring.  Stacey talks her about her varied background to how she has arrived at digital (and now traditional) picture book publishing and creation.  She clarifies what a picture book app actually is and shows how she creates her work traditionally in watercolour and brings it into the iPad via Demibooks Composer (a very good picture book creation app).  She also provides good advice on interactivity, what to make move, have sounds or how to react with touch.  After watching this I decided that one of my manuscripts will be ideal as an app so watch this space.

Don’t forget that watching these courses is fun and entertaining but if you don’t follow the advice and do the assignments you won’t learn.  And, full disclosure, if you click through my links to Craftsy and Skillshare and buy any of my recommendations above I will get a small referral fee, if you do, I thank you for your kind support.

Creating A Children’s Picture Book Illustration Portfolio - Format and Content - What to Put In? - Part 2

In my first post on the subject of Creating A Children’s Picture Book Illustration Portfolio I talked about the quantity and quality of the images.  In this post I’d like to explore format and content, by that I mean what the actual images show and how they are presented.  I will use my findings to create action points for me to apply to my own portfolio as it presently stands.

The Format of Children’s Picture Book Illustrations

Based on my observation of current children’s picture books, illustrations destined for the printed page are mostly printed in landscape format, spanning double page spreads.  In the past we saw more of single spread images and spot images and these are useful if you need more than the allocated 32 pages to tell the story.  

The Content of Children’s Picture Book Illustrations

Illustrations in children’s picture books are sequential in that they have multiple images that tell a story that happens over time.  This means that there is a requirement to be consistent in their execution, characters have to be ‘on model’, that is they have to have the same proportions and features and wear the same clothes from page to page (unless the story dictates otherwise).  Colours have to match from image to image.  Locations and props also need to be consistent in the same way.  Sequential storytelling art by its nature shows characters doing lots of actions and having different emotions and feelings.  And again, unless the story demands it, the art is produced in a consistent same style and medium. 

Appraising the Format and Content of the Work in My Own Portfolio

Okay, here is what my portfolio currently looks like, as whole, as seen on my website:

Disregarding its quality, I have a minimum desired quantity of six illustrations, of mainly human subjects, painted traditionally with gouache on paper.  I also have a digital piece, an ink and watercolour and a scraperboard.  

This is a tonal gouache sketch of a spread from one of my picture books that I am working on.  I think it is the strongest piece of work in my portfolio as it is has storytelling and is in a complete setting that conveys mood and atmosphere.  This has been affirmed to me by its selection in the 2014 SCBWI (British Isles) Showcase Exhibition a goal that I expressed a wish to achieve back in July when I helped to hang the 2013 Showcase at Seven Stories.

Baby Bouncer is painted in gouache with a touch of digital, set in an interior setting, it hopefully shows consistency in depicting a character and is sequential showing different emotions and action.

When Mum Came Back is a gouache showing a group in exaggerated action, with different emotions.

Outdoor Girl and Sidekick is me trying to capture my gouache style digitally.  I like the characters but I'm not sure of their emotions here, they're perhaps a bit neutral.

Jack Frost is painted with ink and watecolour and is me attempting to draw like Arthur Rackham. Things in favour of this illustration are that is set in a forest setting and I like the rendering of the body.  The storytelling not quite there and the aesthetic is perhaps more fantasy than picture book. 

This Crooked Way is a scraperboard and I like the design style dictated by the medium, but it would need refining if I were to do more of these.   Again perhaps the aesthetic is more fantasy than picture book.

Action Points

So here are my conclusions about the format and content of my children's picture book illustration portfolio and some suggested action points to implement in order to improve it, who knows they may apply to your own portfolio:

• Produce future work in landscape format.
• Produce consistent looking sequential images that show characters doing different actions and showing different emotions.
• Include more settings/backgrounds (move away from white backgrounds)

Further Reading
Here are some good links to what others have to say about children's picture book illustration portfolios:

• Lynne Chapman's professional view on character and characterisation
• Donald Wu gives his professional opinion for ordering your portfolio and good advice on style and content.
• Eliza Wheeler shares her SCBWI feedback on improving her portfolio.

#Inktober - The Benefits of Participating in an Online Challenge

Inktober is a drawing challenge to make one ink drawing a day for the entire month of October.  Inktober was started in 2009 by an artist called Jake Parker, who set himself the challenge to improve his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits.  This, 2014, is the first year that I have taken part in it and my own motives were similar to Jake’s, they were:

• to get better at drawing with ink
• to produce a drawing a day
• to generate images for my Facebook art page

I am pleased to say that I completed the challenge as this video of my Inktober drawings shows:

So what were the benefits of doing this?  Firstly in my work, I got comfortable drawing with ink, without a pencil sketch as a foundation.  My main discovery is that it’s best to draw what is closest to you first, that which overlaps on your subject rather than starting with the general large shapes as you would when drawing in pencil.  This one touch way of drawing was scary but liberating.  I found it easier than I thought to produce a drawing a day, so much so that I plan on keeping the habit up, but not necessarily using just ink. The challenge also served the purpose of content for my Facebook art page and Twitter and Google + too.  The drawings were often of things I did that day so they became like a journal.

There were benefits to doing Inktober in Social Media rather than just through my blog or website.  I don’t currently have many likes for my art page (just under 150) so these numbers won’t sound impressive but according to Facebook I had at least 50 to 200 people seeing individual drawings.  I’m not sure how many saw them on Twitter and Google +.  I would on average get 6 likes per drawing Facebook, a couple of favourites on Twitter and a couple of +1s on Google +.  The Facebook and Google + likes and +1s tended to be from friends and acquaintances but strangers favourited on Twitter.  Best of all I have been approached to produce some prints of some of the drawings and commissioned to make a drawing in my “Inktober” style.

Some lessons learned are that:

• Popular drawings were the ones that feature pop culture such Day 11 of my son dressed as Darth Vader and Day 28 of Michael Jackson in Thriller.  

• Two hash tags (including #inktober) in Twitter would often get retweets and favourites. Tweeting someone specifically generally didn’t.
• Next time I will embed File Info from Photoshop rather than uploading from my phone and I will include a visible URL back to me as some images have turned up on various blogs and have been shared.

So overall it was a really worthwhile challenge and I will definitely do it again next year.  Next up is Tara Lazar’s PiBoIdMo - Picture Book Idea Month.

Creating A Children’s Picture Book Illustration Portfolio - Where to Start? - Part 1

I finished this illustration this week and added it to my portfolio.  I am hesitant to call my portfolio a ‘children’s picture book illustration portfolio’ at this moment in time, not because I am not yet published, but because I don’t think it quite fits the bill.  So how do you create a children’s picture book illustration portfolio?  Where do you start? 

Quantity

Fantasy and Children’s Book illustrator Kiri Østergaard Leonard, has an excellent checklist for illustration graduates:

Number 1 on her list is ‘Build a portfolio of 6 - 12 of your best pieces’.  This gives importance to quantity and quality.  If you have a large quantity of work it suggests that you are more prolific, practised, and perhaps, speedy.  She suggests a higher limit of 12 pieces, any more than that would be tedious for an art director or editor to look through.  Regardless of how many pieces of work are in your portfolio, if it doesn’t contain anything but your highest quality of work then it will be judged on the weakest piece.  Rather than putting in everything that you have ever done in your portfolio put in only your best pieces, 6 at the least.

Quality

How do you know what your best work is?  Ultimately you want to aim for your work to be at industry standard, that is, at the same artistic and technical quality as, or better than, children’s book illustration that is currently being published.  If, like me, you are currently unpublished then your aim should be to make better work than that in your existing portfolio. Try to identify what areas you can fix and improve upon; storytelling, anatomy, perspective, tone, colour, etc?  

In regards to my own portfolio, I need to work on all these areas but most importantly I need to address the image contents, are they fit for purpose?  Could you imagine them in a children’s picture book?  I will address this in my next blog post, so join this blog or follow me on Google + to get notification of when it’s posted.