PiBoIdMo 2015 - Winner!

I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully

executed the PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge,

and will, to the best of my ability, parlay my ideas

into picture book manuscripts.

Wow! My sixth year of participating in Picture Book Idea Month (#PiBoIdMo) was a success!! (even if I was delayed by visiting family for the holidays)

It's always a wonderful challenge… and I'm looking forward to continuing my writing experiments with these ideas. That's been a slow, slow process for me, but definitely something I'll be concentrating on in 2016!

Congrats to all the other winners as well—it's a long haul, but WE MADE IT!

7th Annual Picture Book Idea Month — PiBoIdMo 2015

I have been SLACKING… how can my SECOND blog post of the year be in late October?! I guess it doesn't help that I've have a mysterious illness for almost 2 months… but thankfully that's getting better and I almost feel like a person again (although I still have no idea what it was/is).

It's harvest time for group projects and creative challenges! PiBoIdMo 2015, here I come!

Head over to Taralazar.com to find out more about PiBoIdMo. This will be my SIXTH year participating (and PiBoIdMo's 7th year). 

I'm really looking forward to the month-long guest blog posts, inspiration, and support that PiBoIdMo provides.

I finally started writing last year… and while I've made some progress, I'm still not where I'd like it to be—so, as usual, #PiBoIdMo is a reminder (and a good kick-in-the-pants) to revisit my collected ideas and start WRITING… you know, to go along with all my artwork. I'll just say it: I'm tired of waiting around for someone else's story—time to create my own stories.

I'm so excited, I've started already. (…just a minute ago…idea #1 was recorded for posterity…I think I feel another idea coming on…this is what it's all about)

PiBoIdMo 2014 - Winner!

I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully

executed the PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge,

and will, to the best of my ability, parlay my ideas

into picture book manuscripts.

Wow! My fifth year of participating in Picture Book Idea Month (#PiBoIdMo) was another success!! It's always a wonderful challenge… I don't know if it's because so many others are working right along with me and our combined motivation keeps us going or what, but it works… every year for me!

The best part, after 5 years of participating in generating ideas… I've finally started writing! Well, I actually started before PiBoIdMo, (and I've started several projects in the past, but I'm not counting those, because I never finished any of them!), but it was a real confidence booster overall—actually writing something, being happy with it, working through ideas and story structure, getting it critiqued (by friends and an editor!)… it's a whole new avenue for me and I'm super-excited to keep going! On to revisions!!

Congrats to all the other winners as well—it's a long haul, but WE MADE IT!

#BNSelfie (a little fun & silliness)

Having a little fun at work… I've been madly promoting and selling my book (it's so awesome to be able to personally put my book in people's hands every week) —and last week at my Barnes & Noble, my little self-published book made the No. 2 spot on our store's top 5 bestsellers! Second only the the Disney phenom, Frozen… and beating out two wildly popular YA novels, plus a Pulitzer prize winner! #shamelessshelpromotion #bnselfie #ohyeah

Illustration Friday: SPARK

Hey, so there didn't seem to be a new word from the folks at Illustration Friday this week, so I'm totally going to use this edited piece as my submission for SPARK. Ideas can come from the tiniest sparks of inspiration—keep an eye out and you'll see them everywhere!

Process: Personal Work

I recently finished this new piece as my assignment for the Austin SCBWI Conference. I signed up for the conference a bit too late to have completed the piece BEFORE the event, but art director Laurent Linn was kind enough to invite all attendees to submit a revised or new piece, via email, a few weeks after.

I've also been thinking about experimenting with my style, and this piece gave me the perfect opportunity to try some new ideas. Those of you that know, know I LOVE colored pencil. One of the biggest downsides to working with CP is the time it requires, especially in my chosen approach of burnishing (full paper coverage). I decided to try working at a smaller scale and enlarging my pencil work, to bring out the hidden textures in my usually ultra-smooth looking work.

Concept & character sketches. I didn't have a lot of time to really develop them as much as I would have liked, and I kept second-guessing myself… I eventually decided I just had to go with it and see what happened.

Background, completed separately. It's about 30% of the final size (70% reduced scale). The spot I pulled out isn't even 100%, but it gives you an better idea of the hidden texture that comes out with enlarging.

Characters are about 50% reduced scale. I'm naturally drawn to line work, but I hoping to incorporate the line work in future pieces in a fully digital way, as seen below.

I did single line drawings are random sizes and scaled them as needed to find a composition that worked for the story/piece. These are done in black colored pencil, which adds to the texture/grittiness of the line (although I'd like to try some regular graphite lines, just to see the difference). I them remove the white paper and digitally edit the line colors as needed (mainly via blending layers in photoshop).

So,what do you all think? I'm enjoying this direction, hope you are too!

Happy Holidays!!

To all my Interweb friends and followers – have a happy, happy Christmas and merry New Year!!

I hope to post process images later… I was all over the place with ideas this year, so there's a lot on the "cutting room" floor that I hope to use for future cards and/or projects.

PiBoIdMo 2013 - Winner!

I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully executed 
the

PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge,


and will, to the best of my ability, 
parlay my ideas

into picture book manuscripts.

My fourth year of participating in Picture Book Idea Month (#PiBoIdMo) is a success! I even tried a new approach which has landed me at the end of the month with even more than 30 ideas!

I can't believe it's been a whole month and PiBoIdMo is done once again. This whole year has positively flown by! I'm so thankful for all my experiences and opportunities this year has brought, and I'm especially thankful for the excuse PiBoIdMo has given me to daydream a little extra every day.

PiBoIdMo 2012 - Winner!

I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully executed 
the

PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge,


and will, to the best of my ability, 
parlay my ideas

into picture book manuscripts.

My third year of participating in Picture Book Idea Month (#PiBoIdMo) was another success. And, once again, I find myself thinking… this is really something I should do more regularly – keep a PB idea list going all year long. I still haven't found a way to make it a regular practice, but I think it'll definitely be on my 2013 Resolutions to find a way to make this happen!

And of course, I'm interested in the follow-through of the these ideas. Even if they're only dummies, turning these ideas into completed books is the next big challenge!

I can't believe it's been a whole year since the last PiBoIdMo, and here we are at the end of another one. I've done a lot in the past year, including completing my first finished picture book (as illustrator only), signing on with an illustration agency, visiting the SCBWI-LA Conference for the first time (and as an SCBWI Volunteer), and reading over 200 picture books (as a self-study project to just read more PBs regularly - I posted about it here and here). I did start writing a few of my own picture books, but haven't gotten very far with them yet. I keep stopping myself. It's the one step I haven't figured out how to approach, but I  continue to try and in the meantime – I'm keeping the new ideas rolling in and ready for me when I do figure out the right process for myself, to write AND illustrate my own stories.

iFri Afternoon (9/21)

Kind of a whirlwind week here … including fun design projects (super-cute booklets and maps!), quotes and contracts for illustration projects (not as much fun, cough-cough), and diving into the World of WordPress (not unlike some torture devices I've heard of)! AH!
I'm lucky to end each and every week with a scheduled Friday afternoon Illustration Friday session at a local coffee house with my colleagues at Tangerine Café. Although yesterday's #iFri session turned out to be more of a wordpress workshop, I'm not complaining – that stuff will come in handy!
I grabbed a new sketchbook (not moleskin, shocker!) and doodled until I filled a page, testing out some new pen & pencils samples I got last week at a CPSA meeting with Prismacolor Rep, Shelley Minnis. Most of this is stream-of-consciousness / idea generating chicken-scratch – but a solid idea did take root and I hope to keep working on it today at our regularly scheduled monthly CPSA meeting (CPSA-DC219, ABQ).

Sketching for #ifri for a change!!

So, this talking about stuff I'm doing thing, here on the blog – do you like it? Is this stuff even remotely interesting in the least? I've never really used the blog of discussion before, it's always just been a way to share sketches and extras that aren't 'portfolio' work.
After a crazy-busy summer work schedule and ignoring my blog for 3 months, I'm trying to make an effort to post here more often – especially since I discovered I have nearly 40 people subscribed to it!  (thanks folks!) Let me know what you think. ;)

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 84)

May 04-07, 2012

Some Behind-the-Drawings Thoughts:

5/04 - An homage to Carter Goodrich, who I discovered randomly from an Amazon spam-mail. His background in in animation, but he's done a ton of illustration all over the place, from picture books to New Yorker covers. Really, really impressive work. In this particular piece, I love the monochromatic color of the background & the subtle textures. Lovely.

5/05 - My morning coffee in a giant M cup. Just playing around with markers and drawing from life. This happen to be the very last page in this, Sketchbook #7 of Drawing Morning Pages.

5/06 - A new Sketchbook (#8). I like to feature text a bit more on these first pages of a new book, mainly because this is were I put my contact information in case the book is lost or misplaced. I also like to note the time span the book will encompass (I've never actually counted, but it's 2+ months total - spanning 3 calendar months). So, often this layout ends up being very 'designy'.

5/07 - Illustration Friday, "Hitched". Two concepts I wasn't really wild about, but drew anyway. Just playing around - I never posted them.

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 83)

Apr 30-May 03, 2012

Some Behind-the-Drawings Thoughts:
4/30 - Didn't have any ideas today, so I just started making marks on the page. I remember I was watching Bones on tv… and somewhere along the line it started to look like a board game. Where the mind wanders…


5/01 - April Photo-A-Day Challenge, my complete (Instagram) photos. Some of my favorites are the 'moth before the storm' (NM had record numbers of moths this year - swarms of them - I took this picture before the onslaught), the progression of my blooming amaryllis flower (I took TONS of photos of it, 2.5 made into the challenge themes), awesome NM Skies (always), Younger Me with the tomboy bowl-cut, and the stark electrical lines at sunset.


5/02 - This was an interesting one. I decided to try and draw without looking at the page. Instead, I felt my way around with my hand/palm. I wasn't trying to draw anything specific, just trying to get covered age around the page. They turned out to be pretty interesting abstractions… perhaps I should try it with color sometime.


5/03 - Watercolor. I don't often use it in these Moleskine sketchbooks (the paper just doesn't accept it well, coated), but every once in a while I like to play with water media. These are various items in and around my living room (including the amaryllis seed-pod… after the bloom). I really like how the watering can turned out… I like the idea of watercolor sketches, and the fact that I'm so-not-good at it makes me think I should try it more often

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 82)

Apr 26-29, 2012

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 81)

Apr 22-25, 2012

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 80)

Apr 18-21, 2012

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 79)

Apr 14-17, 2012

Mind numbed - busy, busy, full-time drawing work days mean I just don't want to think during my DMPs. And yes, I actually, inadvertently drew Apr 16 upside-down.

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 78)

Apr 10-13, 2012

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 77)

Apr 06-09, 2012

Missed a day due to delay on starting a specific sketch… UGH the need for perfection is ANNOYING sometimes!

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 76)

Apr 02-05, 2012





Some Behind-the-Drawings Thoughts:
4/02 - Honestly, I didn't have any ideas on this day. I did a blue and red border and left it for two days… then I started drawing in these banners. I'm working on a private commission that includes a flag with a message in latin, I love banners & flag messages, so that's probably where this came from… but still I didn't know what message I wanted to put on them. I finally visited the "Quotes of the Day" page and found a Paul Gauguin quote at the top of the list for April 2. I don't necessarily agree with the statement… but I guess I did technically plagiarize this quote. LOL ;)


4/03 - I was mentally exhausted on this day as well - I started doodling with my markers with no real idea where it was heading… when I finished I had a very nice "background" and considered leaving it as is. But it didn't feel "done" so I let it sit for another day and randomly lit on the idea of silhouettes - as I thought they were something that would work nicely with the decorative patterned background, without coving it up completely. I chose to do children because I have a goal to get better/more comfortable drawing people, particularly children. With photography such a ubiquitous tool these days, I miss the tradition of family silhouettes. I say, bring 'em back - handmade by a family member/s, people!


4/04 - Got some new inks today and just played with them. I made a little informal chart to document what the colors look like on paper and lo and behold, the Teal and Aqua are practically the same color - so I'll be returning the teal and getting either another purple or a brown - DECISIONS! Anyway, I pasted that paper into my sketchbook here, and did a wash on the opposite page. Later in the day when it was dry, I let the colors guide me in the direction for the drawing I did over it.


4/05 - Last weekend I did an observational drawing demonstration at a local independent bookstore. I've never taught drawing before - I didn't understand how to TEACH something I just DO everyday. I never thought about breaking it down into parts, from the beginning. So, in order to prepare, I read some online articles on teaching drawing, I found this one particularly useful. It served as a reminder for myself as well… and this day I decided to draw from life, an amaryllis bud I've been admiring everyday with multitudes of photos on my iPhone. I started with several overlapping blind contour drawings in shades of red - each one a slightly rotated version of the buds. Then I drew a detailed sketch on the facing page (using col-erase red & regular graphite pencils)… and used up a dying brown marker for the background. Lots of notes here too. Almost feels like an official nature journal!

Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition 75)

Mar 29-Apr 01, 2012


Some Behind-the-Drawings Thoughts:
3/29 - I've been very busy and distracted with concepts and heavy thinking over the last few days… when that happens, lots of patterns & scribbles start showing up in my sketchbook. Less thought, more line.
3/30 - I drew this while watching some friends play poker. I'm not a poker player myself, but I was invited and I went. It was actually very interesting to watch and listen. It was also very warm weather, so my thoughts were of spring (or the lack there of - seems to be either summer or winter here).
3/31 - More heavy thought - I just wanted to fill a page here - I was playing with the line quality of my brush-tip fountain pen, then went back in with a charcoal colored brush marker. I just love the 'flaws' of a brush.
4/01 - I've been keeping up with the fat mum slim monthly photo-a-day challenges on instagram. A bit irregularly, but keeping up nonetheless. This is my third mini-photo spread of a month's worth of photos. I'm a very nostalgic person, I love looking at moments in time - and I'm actually really looking forward to rediscovering these collections years from now… and the sketchbook drawings too. LOL!