DRAWING SOME GOLDFISH

Here fishy, fishy...

DAWG ART

A friend/ schoolmate of mine, Alicia VanNoy Call, is having an art show tonight (April 5, 2013) at the Window Box Gallery, in Provo, UT. Animal shelters from different locations all over the world have sent her stories and pictures of dogs, cats, etc. that have inspired or touched the lives of people in a special way. She is helping these animal shelters by donating any proceeds from the sales of the artwork back to the shelter who sent her the story.  Even the Window Box Gallery is forfeiting their profit as well. What an amazing fundraiser. I'll be attending tonight. I hope all of you will check out her paintings. By the way, if you have a special animal in your life, she does commissions! She'll even have an online auction for the pieces. Check her out.

Here's a few of her works! I sure love her style!!!

SCBWI CONFERENCE

The SCBWI Conference was held last Saturday in Salt Lake City. It was AMAZING!!! Martha Rago critiqued our final pieces from her intensive (photo below). She had a lot of good things to say and I learned A TON of things I didn't know before! It was so worth the time, energy, lack of sleep, etc. to participate in her intensive and if another is ever offered, I'd sign up in a heart beat!

Mark and Caralyn Buehner  spoke for about an hour at the conference, as well. What a talented couple. She writes and he illustrates. An amazing team! I was so impressed with Mark's illustration skills, that I went home and bought three of his books. Caralyn wrote one of them. These books are a nice addition to my little library of children's books.


Here's the three I bought:

MARTHA RAGO INTENSIVE

I signed up for this years Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference and was excited to find that the conference seemed to be focused on illustration this time. It turns out that, along with the conference, for an additional fee, I could sign up for an intensive with Martha Rago! Amazing! She's the executive art director of children's books for the publishing company, Harper Collins! Can you believe it?! Well, to say the least, I'm a bit nervous to hear what she has to say about my sketches and book cover idea.

The intensive assignment was to choose between two projects. One was a book titled, Lolly and B. Bear (Goldilocks and baby bear). For this project, a dummy book was to be mocked up. The other project was to come up with a book cover illustration for the book, Princess Cupcake. This assignment also required sketches of main characters and different poses and expressions for Princess Cupcake. I chose this one to participate in.

The conference isn't until the end of February, but the intensive has already begun. Our sketches were due last Sunday to Sherry Miedell, a wonderful illustrator who also organized this event. She'll be sending them off to Martha, who will then give us a critique and let us know what we can do to make our design stronger. When we show up to the conference in February, we will have a finished piece to show her taking in all the changes she suggested. She'll then give us a final critique. Scary!!!

Let's just say, I'm a little intimidated with all of this. Anyway, below are the sketches I sent off. Wish me luck!!!

MY NEXT PROJECTS:

I thought I'd share with you my next two painting projects. I'm excited to get working on them. I'll be working back and forth on both to save me some time. Since these will be painted in oils, I will always have something to work on while waiting for drying time on one or the other. The final pieces will be 18"x24".

I may do some minor tweaking with the sketch of the girl and cat. I'll probably add a necklace to the both of them. I think it just needs a little more.

Hope you like them!

ANOTHER AWARD!!!

When I received a runner up reward from Creative Quarterly for their issue 27 competition, I had mixed feelings- happy that my art had been acknowledged but disappointed that it was a runner up. You see, the runner up awards aren't published in their magazine. The only place to view these pieces is on their website (www.cqjournal.com). I truly appreciated receiving the award and felt quite honored actually, but I also wanted to see my artwork in their magazine. Feeling determined, I decided to enter their competition for issue 28.

I thought of all the illustrations I had completed over the last few months and decided to enter something quite different from my previous entry. This entry wouldn't be narrative (tells a story). It would be conceptual (based on an idea, thought or word)- a form of illustration which seems to be acknowledged in competitions more so than the narrative. Well, I guess I was wiser with my decision this time around because I actually received another award, and this time it wasn't a runner up! Yippee and Wahoo!!!

The Creative Quarterly Issue 28 will hit the stands in November and I will be in it!!! If you live near a Barnes and Noble, go pick one up or order one online!

Here's my winning piece. The title is "HOT":

ANOTHER COLORING PAGE FROM ME TO YOU

This was one of my very first illustrations I ever completed at UVU. It was an assignment for my Illustration 1 class. Wow! It seems so long ago! A professor from the English Department at UVU was creating online ESL readers for anyone who was interested in learning English. My teacher thought it would be great to help him out with some illustrations. Our class accepted the project and chose to illustrate two books. Each student illustrated one page out of one of the books. The book I was assigned was about kittens. I don't remember the story exactly I just remember that my page was, "Kittens get sick."

After looking back at some of my old works, I realized this would make a great coloring page, so I decided to ink it up. Here ya go!

I hope, that by posting my original illustration, I haven't swayed you to use the colors I personally chose. I would LOVE to see the creativity of your kids. Maybe in their version each cat would have polka dots or stripes. Maybe the kittens are sick with chicken pocks. Maybe they will be colored blue because they are sad. I don't think I could even come close to imagining what your kids can come up with but I would sure like to see their works when their done. Scan them in, when their finished, and email them my way. Maybe I'll post some up on my blog!

For those that are having a difficult time trying to figure out how to print these, here's some directions for you to follow.

SAVING AND PRINTING DIRECTIONS: (This is how I would go about printing from my IMac. It may be a little different on your computer, but I hope this, at least, helps some.)

1. On your computer, create a file, title it Coloring Pages, and save it on your desktop or somewhere convenient.
2. On my blog, click on a coloring page to enlarge and isolate it.
3. Right click on the image and choose "SAVE IMAGE AS"
4. Rename the page, if you would like, or just keep it as it is.
5. Choose to save it to the file on your computer which you had previously created.
6. Click "SAVE"
7. Now the coloring page is saved on your computer and in your file. Open your file and then click on the coloring page you would like to print to open it as well.
8. Go to the top of your monitor, scroll down under "FILE" to "PRINT". I've created my coloring pages so that they can each be printed at 100%. No need to reduce the size. They fit perfectly on an 8.5 x11 sheet of paper.
9. You may need to rotate the paper from portrait to landscape depending on the page you are printing. Click "PRINT"
10. You should now have a coloring page to enjoy with your children. Have FUN!!!