Brooklyn Museum Children’s Book Fair

November 15, 2012
by Robin
Events / News
Kristen Balouch, Big Big Voice

Illustration from The Little Little Girl with the Big Big Voice, by Kristen Balouch

 

If you  are in Brooklyn this Saturday, check out the Children’s Book Fair at the Brooklyn Museum. We go every year with our daughter and it’s a great time.

Brooklyn authors and illustrators set up tables in the big main entrance and you can go around and meet them, check out and purchase books, and get your books signed. There are also some cool activities for kids. Man, there are so many amazing illustrators and authors living in Brooklyn. This event is such a unique opportunity!

This year’s participating authors and illustrators:

Selina Alko, Kristen Balouch, Cathleen Davitt Bell, Artie Bennett, Peter Brown, Michael Buckley, Shana Corey, Nina Crews, Zetta Elliott, Tonya Engel, Brian Floca, Robbin Gourley, Melanie Hope Greenberg, Lisa Greenwald, Mike Herrod, Kate Hosford, Melissa Iwai and Denis Markell, John & Wendy, Michelle Knudsen, Diane Kredensor, Nancy Krulik, Laura Ljungkvist, Torrey Maldonado, Andrés Vera Martínez, Yona Zeldis McDonough, Scott Menchin, Alexis Moniello, Matthew Myers, Johan Orlander, Puck (Mauricio Velázquez de León), Sean Qualls, Daniel Salmieri, Stephen A. Savage, Marilyn Singer, Brian Snyder, David Ezra Stein, Naoko Stoop, Colleen A. F. Venable, Miriam Weiner and Shannon Whitt, and Dwight Jon Zimmerman

THE DEETS: Children’s Book Fair, Brooklyn Museum, Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 12–4 p.m.
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York

2013 Tomie dePaola Awards

November 15, 2012
by Robin
News

Looking for an external deadline and cool assignment to get your creative juices flowing? I give you the Tomie dePaola Awards! Tomie, the renowned author and illustrator of Strega Nona, gives you a passage from a book to illustrate and if he picks you as the winner you get a free ride to the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York. The competition is open to all SCBWI members. (You might want to consider joining anyway and checking out their conferences. I have been twice and I’ve learned a lot both times. Lots of inspiring, informative speakers.)

I entered this contest in 2011, when the assignment was to illustrate a scene from  the opening passage of Heidi. I remember learning a lot through the process of creating the piece and I remember completely changing my illustration the night before it was due! I also remember kind of hating what I did. I hate it less now.  Here’s my final piece:

My final submission for the 2011 Tomie DePaola Awards. I didn’t love the piece and I didn’t win but I definitely stretched my creative muscles.

An earlier sketch.

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You gotta keep ’em separated

November 12, 2012
by Liz
Process / Show and Tell

As I mentioned last week, I recently launched a Kickstarter to make silkscreened children’s posters. I thought I’d talk a little bit about how I designed them.

The idea came from a doodle in my sketchbook. I like to draw animals, and the Olympics were coming.

Initial sketch. That’s a swim cap, not a vintage Army helmet.

And I knew I wanted to make some posters. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted them to be silkscreened or offset printed, but I didn’t really need to know that to start designing, because I did know this: I wanted the images to be printed in a series of flat, overlapping colors. Read More

A quick Sunday post

November 11, 2012
by Liz
Uncategorized

Matt Singer – “All This Joy” from Family Records on Vimeo.

I saw this music video by Matt Singer today at BAM’s puppet film festival. It’s been out for a while, but I thought I’d share it anyway. It is a little slice of happiness.

Blown Covers

November 10, 2012
by Ruthie
Creativity / Show and Tell

When Robin told us about the Blown Covers contest, all the planets aligned for me. Françoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman offer a great opportunity – a “monthly New Yorker cover-esque competition.” It’s simple: they announce a theme, showing some great past New Yorker covers for inspiration; anyone can submit their idea. They publish the runners up in a harrowing daily countdown until the winner is finally revealed. It’s equally fantastic that they always include a slideshow of all the submitted pieces at the end. I love seeing how many unique takes on one theme people come up with, and how sometimes, what seems original might just not be in the end! Read More

What Art Directors REALLY Think About Your Online Portfolio

November 7, 2012
by Robin
Self-Promotion

It’s no surprise that an art director’s main source for finding illustrators is the good ole world wide web. Art Directors look at hundreds of websites a year so naturally they have some strong opinions about what they love and what they hate about the sites they visit. I polled several of my art director friends and we came up with some online portfolio dos and don’ts.

Don’t freak out if your site is more “don’t” than “do”. If an art director loves your work, she’ll most likely want to work with you regardless of what your site looks like. In fact lots of amazing illustrators have kind of crappy websites. That said, if you have a simple, well-considered and well-edited website, your work will shine, you will look professional, and you will make your potential future art director very happy.

_________________________________________

Don’t make us work to see your work. We want to see your work as quickly and easily as possible. My motto is “more scrolling/less clicks.” I much prefer scrolling through images to clicking on lots of teeny tiny thumbnails or numbers to move through a portfolio.

Do make it easy to navigate: Make your menu clear and divide your work in a meaningful way. Make it easy for us to move from project to project. “I’m a fan of a simple gallery. I don’t like work organized in a million sections unless the work is so different that it warrants that,” says Rex. Melinda Beck works in variety of styles but her menu and site design are so clear it’s easy to navigate.

Melinda Beck Screenshot

Melinda Beck has a simple gallery for each of her illustration styles. The drop-down menu allows the viewer to find each style easily.


Do scrap the bells and whistles: “The simpler the website, the better. Flashy flash doesn’t impress
me,” says Michele. Remember we are hiring an illustrator not a web designer. We just want to see your work.

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A short post about a big project

November 7, 2012
by Liz
Uncategorized

BASCATBALL

(If you tried to click through to the previous, mistakenly posted post, here it is. FOR REAL!)

Here’s an illustration project that’s occupied me for a while: a Kickstarter! I’m hoping to silkscreen a lot of big posters, of animals playing sports. Come for the video, stay for the posters! I’ll talk a little bit about my process in a later post.

A Pen & Oink interview with Lauren Castillo, in which she talks process and coffee

November 5, 2012
by Liz
Interviews / Process

Lauren Castillo joins us today! The thing I love about Lauren’s work is that it’s just so classic. I’d always envisioned her working quite traditionally on fancy thick watercolor paper. So I was surprised to handle some of her finished art recently and discover that she works on regular old drawing paper out of a pad!

Lauren’s latest book, The Reader, just came out. She’ll be touring the Internet to talk about it, and we are her first stop (scroll to the bottom for the rest of the tour schedule). Process geeks—I include myself here—you are in luck. Below, Lauren shares how she made the illustrations for The Reader, in juicy detail.

THE DIRT ON: Lauren Castillo
Hometown: Bel Air, Maryland
Now lives in: Brooklyn, NY
Tools of the trade: lots of things! Pen, ink, marker, watercolor, paper, salt, acetone (for line transfers)…
Illustration idol: Just one? Hmm, okay then I guess I’ll have to go with Maurice Sendak (…and I’ll also quickly sneak in John Burningham, Helen Oxenbury and Mercer Mayer!)
Caffeine of choice: Coffee, Italian-style.
Workspace: I have a studio in the front part of my railroad apartment.

Studio Castillo

Favorite children’s book
…as a child: Imogene’s Antlers by David Small, and Henry’s Awful Mistake by Robert Quackenbush
…as an adult: There are so many favorites. But a few off the top of my head: Snow by Uri Schulevitz, Leaves by David Ezra Stein, The Gardener by Stewart and Small
Favorite thing to read: pictures
YouTube video you can’t stop watching: This video inspired my upcoming book as author, The Troublemaker. Gets me every time!
Must-read blog: 7-imp!

Let’s talk about process. How do you make the illustrations for a book, start to finish?

Well every book is a little bit different, but I’ll run you through the process of illustrating my most recent book, The Reader:

When my editor, Melanie Kroupa, sent over the manuscript for The Reader, I knew right away that it was a story I’d LOVE to illustrate—a boy, a dog, and snow! What could be better? And, after reading the sweet text by Amy Hest, I was SOLD.

I imagined the world of this little boy and his dog right away, but it took a little more work for me to get the boy just like I wanted him. At first I drew him looking older…

an early sample for lauren castillo's THE READER

But the more I drew, the more it became clear that he would be smaller—much younger and more playful. So, after a lot of scribble-filled sketchbook pages, I finally got him just right.

Character roughs for Lauren Castillo's THE READER

Character roughs…

Character studies for Lauren Castillo's THE READER

…and studies

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A Pen & Oink Interview with Neil Numberman

November 2, 2012
by Ruthie
Interviews

Above: opening spread from Big Hairy Drama (Joey Fly, Private Eye, Book 2)

Neil Numberman is a rockin’ author and illustrator. He illustrated the Joey Fly, Private Eye graphic novel series and wrote and illustrated the picture book Do NOT Build a Frankenstein!
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A Technique For Producing Ideas

October 31, 2012
by Robin
Creativity / Process / Thoughts

Cassie and Patrick’s bulletin board.

My writer friends, Patrick and Cassie, have this sign hanging on the cork board of their home office.

I asked Patrick where he got it, and it turns out it is an except from a classic book, A Technique for Producing Ideas, by advertising executive, James Webb Young. Young first presented the 5-step process in 1939 and he published a book about it in 1965.

I love it. Especially the “Relax” part. Seriously! I find that I need to build that “Relax” stage into my timeline when I am doing both client and personal work.

I also love that it is so straight-forward and in some ways reassuring: follow these steps, get it down, you’ll figure it out (“idea appears!”). By breaking down the steps, Young helps us turn potentially daunting projects into digestible smaller steps.

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Just a random penguin.

October 26, 2012
by Liz
Animation / Just Because / Show and Tell

I know, the meme is so over already. It’s been like, half a day? But I wanted to fiddle around with After Effects, and I like penguins. So there.

Photos are from Flickr users Loretín, Lord Biro, and George M. Groutas. Why can’t I put a caption on a video? So many questions this morning.

Soon Baboon Soon

October 24, 2012
by Ruthie
Featured Books / Inspiration

Above: spread from Soon Baboon Soon by Dave Horowitz.

“Orangutans bang everythang“

Mr. Horowitz has forever changed my brain when it comes to the word “soon”. I can no longer say it without hearing: “..baboon, soon” in my head and chuckling to myself. In fact, I never realized just how many times I used the word soon until I started adding baboon soon to it! And it’s exactly this rhythm that he creates throughout his story of percussion wielding primates. Read More