Conferences and Experimentation

Last weekend, I went to the SCBWI Poconos Mountain Retreat. I usually anguish over which editor to listen to. This time, I took the illustration workshop led by Patrick Collins, the Art Director at Henry Holt. I can't say enough good things about him and the workshop he led.

During the workshop, he gave us each a chapter from a chapter book. We were supposed to break up the text on a galley and then illustrate our assigned pages -- without a visual reference. I have to admit that I'm used to having something to look at when I draw, so at first, I was stumped. Blank page syndrome. Patrick was not only encouraging, but he also kept us going so we'd all finish in time. I loved seeing all the sketches when we paged through the galley we made.

That workshop really made the weekend for me. Besides Chautauqua, it was the most I had ever gotten from a conference.

So... I decided to work on disciplining myself to work without visual references. Since I don't know what styles work best for me, I'm going to experiment a bit.

Something Drawn and More Revision

Something Drawn...
I finally got over my blank page syndrome with the illustration and drew something. I'm not finished with the first draft of this illustration (do you call them drafts), but I'm at least getting somewhere. I decided to do each element of the drawing separately, scan them in, rescale and rearrange everything, and then print the final image on nicer drawing paper.

The main character in the story I'm illustrating is a pig, and I haven't quite decided whether to give her hooves or hand-like appendages. I guess I'll figure it out.

More Revision...
I feel as if I've revised some of my stories until they've bled. Two of my online critique groups are critiquing my middle grade novel - one group critiques one chapter per week, and the other group critiques one chapter every 2 1/2 to 3 weeks.