Friendship Bracelets

{Friendship Bracelets, 2011}

{Friendship Bracelets, 2011}

{Friendship Bracelets, 2011}

I found a really inexpensive and fun tutorial for a breezy summer craft! One of my favorite blogs to read, Fieldguided shared a link to a friendship bracelet DIY project on the Honestly... WTF blog. Making these bracelets made me think of my trips to summer camp and swimming in the lake! Plus, colorful friendship bracelets are all the rage right now! These are the first few I made, but I have enough embroidery floss to do several more for friends!

SCBWI Wisconsin Illustrator's Intensive

{Oil on Board, 2011}

This past weekend I headed up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for an illustrator's intensive with Simon & Schuster art director Laurent Linn. When I signed up for the program, it came with an assignment. Participants were given two stories to choose from and each person had to choose a scene to illustrate. We sent sketches to Laurent a few months prior to the event and he responded with comments to make it better. This is the sketch I initially sent to him:{Sketch on Cardstock, 2011}

Some of his comments for improvement were that that characters were too crowded and that the point of view seemed too high. This is how I fixed that:

{Sketch on Paper, 2011}

Laurent didn't get to see our revised sketches but he was pleasantly surprised to see the final had changed so much. (it's often hard to break away for your initial vision and I think it can be hard to admit that something isn't working and that you need to rethink a composition.) Overall, it was very affirming to hear that Laurent liked the solution I had arrived at. He also liked the period details and color choices I had made (yay!). Overall, the intensive was really interesting. We got to see how different each artist's style was and their interpretations of different scenes. I took a lot of notes as Laurent critiqued each piece. He has so many nuggets of wisdom and was so nice! He has a really genuine respect and passion for the art of children's books and I think everyone in attendance got something out of his visit.

Summer Respite

{ Water Soluble Graphite in Sketchbook, 2011}

On Saturday, I finished the illustrations for my second children's book and breathed a sigh of relief. My deadline was closing in and it was a race against time to get them to the publisher so that they could get the book to print. UPS should be dropping that off any time today! I'm proud to say, " I DID IT!". In 5 1/2 months I painted over 40 illustrations in alkyd oils. Whew! I'm not going to lie and say I loved every minute of it. Who loves every minute of their job? To my surprise, I did love an awful lot of it though! I know this is the career for me. I believe strongly in children's literature! I am so happy to be contributing to it in a small way and so grateful for the chances I have been given to do it. Looking forward to some nice slow summer days, working on some portfolio pieces, and who knows what else!

You Can Pre-Order "The Twelve Days of Christmas- In Texas, That Is" Now

{Cover, Pelican Publishing, 2011}

My first book, written by David Davis is now available for pre-order through Amazon or you can fill out the publisher form to get a reminder about the September 30th release date!