The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 130,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Have you drawn in your sketchbook today? It’s a question that humbles every aspiring children’s book illustrator.
But in our “high touch era” where the handcrafts site Etsy numbers near the top of online marketplaces and scrapbooking became so cool that it inspired the social media phenomenon known as Pinterest, sketchbooks and the art of filling them are no longer restricted to fine artists and commercial artists and hobby painters.
It’s a more general cause celebre and maybe even a craze, if popular blog groups like SketchCrawl, Urban Sketchers and Everyday Matters are an indication. Since 2009 the Brooklyn Art-House Co-Op has been gathering up sketchbooks and sending them on national tour in a traveling library. This year the effort extended across the Atlantic to include London. Hence the name, 2012 Sketchbook Project World Tour.
“The Sketchbook Project is a global, crowd-sourced art project where participants from all walks of life are sent a sketchbook and have until January 15th to fill the pages and return it for inclusion in a traveling exhibition and permanent collection at The Brooklyn Art Library,” the co-op’s website says.
You can see some 500 photos on the Facebook page. And some more cool photos in this Instagram gallery on Tumblr.
Our children’s picture book critique group under the Austin (Texas) Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), the Inklings decided to take part in this year’s tour with a group sketchbook mosaic.
It’s all explained (twice) in this riveting cinéma vérité documentary. Notice how the camera is not only hand-held in the respected auteur tradition, but often entirely neglected as the chronicler starts talking with his subjects and the lens tips to study T-shirts and shoes, picnic tables and dirt on the ground…
Austin (September 12-16) was the last North American stop before the books moved on to London. Starting from Brooklyn they’d already traveled to Chicago, Portland, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Oakland, Lynn, Portland (Maine), Toronto, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Orlando.
Co-Lab Project Space on Allen Street in East Austin was converted into a library replete with signage, computers, workers, loaded bookshelves and waiting lines. According to the Brooklyn ArtHouse archive, 2,435 books were checked out and viewed during those four days in Austin and 300 new Sketchbook Project library cards were issued.
The sketchbooks, new ones will be back in Austin next year — at Co-Labs again and at the SXSW Festival scene on March 15-17 for the 2013 World Tour.
Maury Tieman, Martha Carleton, Mark Mitchell, Joyce Chambers-Selber and Allissa Chambers of the Austin SCBWI Inklings — with “Willie Lisa.” Other “Inklings” who participated in the mosaic project included Margaret Jonon Buford, Martin Fry, Ann Hartman, Jeff Crosby and the late Louise Shelby.
The biggest news of recent weeks? No, it wasn’t the U.S. presidential election. It was Disney buying LucasFilm/LucasArts and all Star Wars rights for $4 billion. Here’s a Forbes take on the purchase and more particulars and videos from Mashable. It means more Star Wars movies to come, a re-thinking and possible scrapping of Star Wars games currently on the boards and a new (apparently long overdue) Disney line for boys.
No, Star Wars didn’t start off as a children’s book, but it could have. The Disney purchase evidences the staggering value of an intellectual asset and of what sometimes can happen when a story with good characters ascends to the status of a meme. This was not a freak occurrence, either. In 2009 Disney paid $4 billion for Marvel Comics.
The other news of course is the publishing merger. Two of the “Big Six”, Random House, owned by the conglomerate Bertelsmann and Penguin, owned by publishing giant Pearson announced joining forces in a deal exptected to close sometime next year (to counter the threat of Amazon, some industry watchers suggest.) Combined companies willl have a fourth of the English-language consumer book sales, asserts the Publishers Weekly story on the announcement,
The merger takes the “Big Six” down to five: Random House Penguin, Hachette, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, HarperCollins, which is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the CBS owned Simon & Schuster — with those pesky 21st century publishing upstarts Amazon, Apple and Microsoft nipping at their heels.
November is Picture Book Month and author Dianne de Las Casas with co-founding author-illustrators Elizabeth Dulemba, Katie Davis, Tara Lazar and Wendy Martin have assembled this this delightful blog where author-illustrators guest post and the joys and significance of this peculiarly demanding literary art form.
November is also Picture Book Idea Month, if you didn’t know. It’s what PiBoIdMo stands for, writes children’s author Tara Lazar. “Tired of novelists having all the fun in November with NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month]? That’s why I created PiBoIdMo, as a 30-day challenge for picture book writers,” she says. “The concept is to create 30 picture book ideas in 30 days. You don’t have to write a manuscript (but you can if the mood strikes).” The PiBoiMo part of Tara’s blog is loaded full with super “process posts” and tips from practitioners, along with some great author-illustrator “war stories” that will move and inspire you.
On the storm front, Chronicle Books editor Melissa Manlove is offering what is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an aspiring picture book author — a FREE PASS to one of her company’s editorial meetings, along with a private critique before yourstory goes to the meeting. It’s one of many neat auction items touted for KidLit Cares, a Hurricane Sandy relief effort. Read all about it on organizer and children’s book author Kate Messer’s blog.
Caldecott honor-winning illustrator E.B. Lewis will keynote the conference, Kick It Up a Notch as well as conduct a special illustrators’ intensive on Sunday after Saturday’s main event.
In the video below Lewis speaks compassionately on his painting exhibit Lotto Icons, which began as scribbled ideas in his (what else?) sketchbook.
Steve Connor is an abstract fine arts painter, former art director, Adobe CS-6 certified instructor and CEO of Deep4D Digital Media & Training. He demystifies the PS tools and the difference modes of drawing and painting with them in this free 90 minute workshop, Vector and Paint: An Intro to Photoshop.
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Award-winning author-illustrator Mark Mitchell wrote this post. Get on the blog mailing list and see some short videos on “the best secret” to good drawing.
Author-Illustrator Jeff Crosby
Children’s book author-illustrator Jeff Crosby (Wiener Wolf, Disney-Hyperion) was talking with young students of the Austin Independent School District the other day — and he let them tell him a story, while he illustrated their scenes.
A bit of a high wire act, yes but he pulled it off with his usual calm and cleverness.
You can see the story somewhere in the following slide show.
The slides include some of Jeff’s original sketches and paintings from Wiener Wolf as well as for Little Lions, Bull Baiters & Hunting Hounds (Tundra Books) that he wrote and illustrated with his wife, author-illustrator Shelley Ann Jackson.
The event was for a birthday bash of sorts, 100 Years of School Libraries in Austin.
Congratulations to Melissa Sweet — winner of the 2012 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Illustration, for Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of the Macy’s Parade (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), a picture book biography that was five years in the making and has won several other awards.
And congratulations to Juana Martinez Neal, Grand Prize winner, and Mary Jo Scott, Nancy Armo and Mary Lundquist, honor winners in the Summer Conference Portfolio Contest.
The awards were presented at the conference Sunday luncheon in Los Angeles.
Does the Russian animator Alexander Petrov know a thing or two about using thumbnail sketches to build his stories and move them forward? Of course he does! Read about this and see his complete Academy Award – winning animated film, The Old Man and the Sea (20 minutes), based on Ernest Hemingway’s short novel here on the Illustration Course blog.
Austin SCBWI’s Digital Symposium II: Nuts and Bolts of Success is a hands-on technology workshop for illustrators and authors of all techie levels. Be it blogging or beveling, tweeting or technique sharing, hyperlinking or hashtagging, the intention of this symposium set for October 6 at St. Edward’s University is for the participants to leave with new skills to add their technological tool belts. You can download the full packet here, which includes conference info and an off-line registration sheet.
“Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks!” online course
Learn drawing and painting the fun way this summer. Take Mark Mitchell’s self-paced, online course Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks!
It teaches a dynamic approach to illustrating children’s books using traditional painting mediums.
Discover a great secret about drawing (four videos) and find more details about the course here.
Children’s book author-illustrator Kevin Henkes received the Caldecott Medal in 2005 for his picture book Kitten’s First Full Moon (Greenwillow, HarperCollins.)
But that was just a step on the journey that began more than 25 years before when, as a junior in high school, he decided to make a career of illustrating children’s books.The summer after his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Henkes set out for New York, portfolio under his arm.
He was 19. His first stop was Greenwillow Books and there he met the publishers founder, Susan Hirschman who, in the words from his website bio “signed him up on the spot.”
Henkes’s first published picture book, All Alone (1981) was followed by a series of icgture books featuring little mice characters — most famously Owen, named a Caldecott Honor Book (1994) and Lilly of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse (1996.)
“Each book is different. Some come easily, and some are very difficult to bring to completion.
I’ll often think about an idea for months, even years, before I’m ready to write,” Henkes says.
“It’s difficult to say how much time I spend on each illustration. I don’t do each illustration from start to finish; I do them in stages. I do sketches for the entire book first. Then I’ll refine all the sketches. Next, I’ll do a finished pencil drawing for each illustration in the book.”
He then inks, tests colors for each illustration, then paints in watercolor.
The PB Dummy Challenge crew wraps up its series on the #KidLitArt blog this week with this this post about how to pitch your story to the world and author-illustrator Tara Lazar’s encouraging video in which she shares truths about rejection and “revisions on spec” requests from editors.
“Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks!” online course
Learn drawing and painting the fun way this summer. Take Mark Mitchell’s self-paced course Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks!, which teaches a dynamic approach to illustrating children’s books using traditional watercolor. Discover a great secret about drawing (video) and more about the course here.
I’ll admit that I was floored by the quality of the essays turned in for our “Epiphany” contest.
The deadline was Wednesday. Contestants were asked to compose an answer of no more than 400 words to a rather broad question, “What’s the major discovery you’ve made or the biggest insight you’ve learned this year in drawing or painting, or marketing yourself as an artist in the children’s publishing field?”
The winning essay would net its author a terrific video course by illustrator and teacher Will Terry, How to Illustrate Children’s Books.
Collectively the submissions gave me fresh insight into the readers of this blog. I already knew that many of you are illustrators or artists and love children’s literature.
I didn’t know that so many are writers — good, analytical, thoughtful — eloquent in several cases — and practical-minded language handlers. These pieces were a pleasure to read.
The answers were so good that I can hardly wait to publish them all here. I feel a pushing sense of urgency to get them out to you. But it will happen steadily over the coming weeks.
Tonight we’ll publish the winner, by Maya Scharke of Quebec, Canada with its theme of doing, but doing bit by bit.
A glimpse into the mind of an artist…oh how quickly the wings flutter, perhaps as fast as a hummingbird hovering around gooey artificial red syrup. It seems to churn in the middle of the night, in the early morning, over granola at breakfast, during quick skis in the woods, and most often in front of a warm fire with a glass of wine.
The flurry of activity in my mind is analogous to that of a newly filled bird feeder on a cool crisp day, it scurries, dips, dives, spins and circles. I have often found myself looking into my mind, or that blank canvas saying, “Wowza, what should I do next? I have so many things to do, so much to learn!
Do I develop my story ideas through gesture drawings, do I practice my perspective skills, do I work on character design, or value painting, or brush up on my figure drawing, or, or, um, or…oh boy, Wowza, what shoooould I do next?” I suspect these feelings of confusion that stem entirely from sheer excitement to ‘do’, often overwhelm many of my fellow artists in the same way. I have found it often translates into blocks of anticipation rather than productivity.
This can be stifling, especially when life doesn’t produce many windows of time to deliberate! This type of activity in my mind has forced me to step back, re-evaluate how I quantify my productivity, or should I say qualify my productivity. I mean doesn’t it all contribute to the ultimate goal?
The spinning and thinking and especially the heartfelt, ‘deep in your belly’ emotions experienced for loving the creative process, it has to count for something!?! It must, I really do believe it does! Therefore, in hopes to practice what I preach,
I have made a pact with myself to approach my expectations of productivity differently, to focus on the overarching aspiration and contribute to that with baby steps.
Open my sketchbook every day, try out new techniques, plan time to move my creative projects along, engage in discussions about art, and really make the ENTIRE creative process a part of my everyday life.
So, that’s it, my epiphany, my insight, lift the pressure and just create! I encourage others to do the same. We don’t know what will come out of it but you can guarantee satiation, sheer satisfaction, and contentment from fulfilling such an intrinsic desire.
For some children’s book artists this interview might be a little hard to hear and to bear. For others it could offer new hope.
Jo Ann Miller of Serbin Communications’ Directory of Illustration suggests that illustrators think a little bit outside the book.
You’ve seen artists’ directories — glossy annuals combined with online portfolio galleries where artists or their reps buy display ads. The Directory of Illustration is the dreadnought battleship of illustration directories, aiming its marketing guns at the entire waterfront of graphic arts, not just children’s publishing. That means children’s products, fashion and cosmetics merchandising, corporate promotions, retail advertising, medical illustration, the animation industry and even landscape design — to name a few.
With the Toy Industry Association as a partner, the Santa Barbara, Ca. based publisher also produces Play! “Illustration for Toys and Interactive Games — a website for hiring toy and interactive game artists.
Best of Photography Annual, the Medical Illustration Sourcebook , and Designer Jewelry Showcase are some other annuals from Serbin Communications.
The Directory of Illustration is going on its 27th year. It’s not cheap being in a dominant industry directory . $2,500-$2,600 gets you a full page with 30 portfolio images. Artists re-up year after year, sometimes sharing pages with others who have the same art rep or agent. Program benefits include, hardcopy distribution to 20,000 illustration buyers and art directors, national online advertising, free website design and cross promotion with Contact, a leading talent directory in the UK and Europe.
If you’re like me and many freelancers who keep a death grip on their wallets, you might question spending the equivalent of a small book advance every 12 months to participate in a showcase with a few hundred of your keenest competitors.
Why do it when you can upload images for free to your Flickr page, WordPress.com blog, SCBWI portfolio, or favorite art web ring. Or mail out your own printed Christmas postcards to the small ranks of active children’s book editors?
You can do it to reach markets for your art that you might never have thought of, says Jo Ann.
So lets let her talk us through some of this.
What does the “Directory of Illustration” offer artists who have their hearts set on illustrating children’s books?
I love children’s book illustration and I work with many children’s book illustrators in the directory, but they also do other things.
The children’s publishing market can pay very well but advertising and design generally pays better. The market for children’s book art ebbs and flows. The in-between target group — ages 12 – 15 (particularly girls) — based on what iour clients tell me, happens to be very active.
So the first question I always ask illustrators is, ‘Who is your target audience? What is your age group?’
New York illustrator Lisa Falkenstern generally works in oils, but also in egg tempera, acrylic, and digitally. Here’s her directory portfolio page. After 20 years as a professional illustrator,she’s just finished illustrations for The Busy Tree, by Jennifer Ward for ages 5-8, published by Marshall Cavendish. She’s also written and illustrated her own children’s work that is currently in production. Treat yourself to a look at her magical website.
Is that what you told aspiring illustrators in the Portland chapter of SCBWI, when you were invited to speak to them recently?
We discussed how the art buyer looks at the target audience and the age group within that target audience, and things like color — the palette. Right now purple and magenta colors dominate in advertising, so illustrators showing a lot of purple in their portfolios are getting looks.
I can remember a few years ago when the Razor Skooter first appeared in stores — if an illustrator had a child on a razor scooter, he was appealing to art buyers who were looking to market to that age group.
When Starbucks was ready to launch its franchises around the country every illustrator who had an image of a coffee cup on his page in our directory was getting calls.
So you’re saying it comes down to the marketplace.
Yes. So if you understand how to tell a story and emotionally connect with people in the pages of Scholastic magazine or a picture book — can you make the attitude shift to collaborate with an art buyer or a designer to put together a product or package?
If you can, if you can interpolate the needs of the art buyers and you’re not afraid of taking art direction or design direction, you’ll strengthen your repertoire and make a little more money.
Your children’s illustration on a children’s clothing hang tag.
Tom Kerr, a directory artist based in Omaha works in acrylic, colored pencil, watercolor. pen and ink and digital media. Here’s his directory portfolio page. His light humorous style has found its way into newspaper editorial cartoons, magazines, animation characters and 25 books, the most recent being “Math Wizardry for Kids” by Margaret Kenda and Phyllis S. Williams (Barron’s Publishing.)
So your message to artists is, try to expand into different venues?
Over the years I’ve seen illustrators getting their names in editorial publications because they were doing storytelling art for merchandise packaging. I’ve seen it work the other way, too — illustrators’ success grow from the editorial audience to the design audience. That’s because the same age group that buys a book will buy the game, the cereal, the clothing and the McDonald’s happy meal set with the character toy and all the packaging.
The art buyer looks at the children’s market as being intertwined with comic books, graphic novels, sci fi market and merchandising and advertising. I don’t think illustrators are always thought of as having a style. They’re thought of in terms of solving a problem.
You put an image on a book to sell the book…the magazines…
the product… the ad campaign.
So it’s not just storytelling, but it’s also selling a product.
If you can show the skill set beyond storytelling, you broaden your appeal to the ad agencies and design shows. That means if you can illustrate a story, but you also have certain digital skills, some animation or flash, or modeling and 3-D skills, you’ll often be considered for a variety of products.
Is there a place in this commercially driven universe for the traditional illustration, rendered with real paint on real paper?
Digital art seems to get more attention than traditional art. It’s very popular for packaging and creating characters. It’s used to communicate just about anything. Digital artists get a lot of people looking in their portfolios.
But there are always people — right now especially — looking for that nostalgic, hands on feel in the art. Watercolor, draftsmanship, the simple pen and ink line have a more important place than they had three years ago. Everybody’s been touched by someone who’s lost a job. People are going through a tough time. They want an emotional comfort level. That means images that strike an emotional, warm and fuzzy feeling, that appear hand-made rather than in your face and MTV-like.
Would you want your child, your three year old exposed only to that hard edged computer or Disney- look?
No!
There’s always a need for the humaneness in visual images — particularly in an economy that’s struggling. And it’s often found in pictures done in the very traditional mediums like watercolor and pencil. I think artists of that old school style have shied away from promoting themselves.
When they should be embracing opportunities to showcase their art.
So we have artists in the directory like John Parra whose fine art/folk art traditional style finds outlets in many kinds of publications — including children’s books.
Gracias Thanks by Pat Mora with illustrations by John Parra
who works in acrylic, oils and digitally. See his website.
In her own life Jo Ann ran up against this vexing question.
At age 18 she became a national dance champion (having studied dance since the age of 5).
She won the title of Miss Dance of America, which led to an invitation to enter the Miss America Pageant, where she tied for 11th place.
At 19, she won Miss New York State. She entered the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City with her scholarship from the pageant. “I wanted to dance but I never knew how to promote myself except to audition,” she says. “My father wanted to help. He was an engineer. He put together a business card for me that said ‘dancer, beauty pageant winner.'”
After college studies in marketing she worked as a Ford Model in New York City. But an injury while filming a TV commercial forced a career shift — she launched a public relations firm on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California.
Her client base came to include Vanessa Williams and President Ronald Reagan.
Over the last 17 years Jo Ann has worked matching illustrators and designers with buyers and art directors, first with the now gone artists directory American Showcase, then Serbin Commuinications and The Directory of Illustration.
Page illustration by Tom Kerr
Page illustration by Tom Kerr from the Directory of Illustration
Jo Ann, is it true that the Directory of Illustration is not for everyone?
Not every children’s book illustrator will be right for the Directory of Illustration.
Not all illustrators have the ‘want to’ or the ability to understand the buyer’s needs.
And if the illustrator doesn’t get it and he’s not seasoned enough to deal with a call like that then it’s embarrassing for us. Our job is trying to match qualified art buyers with qualified illustrators. If they don’t match, we’re not doing our job.
If the illustrator is too amateurish or hasn’t developed his ‘voice,’ he’s not ready for our program.
We don’t want artists spending money for a program they’re not ready for.
We’re not the vehicle to ‘break in’ with.
I’ve turned so many people away, but with generous insight. Part of the consulting I’m doing is guiding these artists. Most want honest feedback, some idea of how they fit into the industry.
If someone wants a discussion prior to investing in the directory or any kind of marketing program — I can consult with that person and help them out a lot. When I work with an illustrator, I make recommendations depending on the artist, trends and many criteria. I don’t tell someone what to do. I guide them, and send them back to the drawing board again and again.
She offers one on one consultations — usually in the summer months.
Illustrators are welcome to contact her by e-mail at: joannmiller@serbin.com
She recommends that they send a short introduction and an image or two ( jpgs or a site link.) And she encourages all artists to check out the Directory of Illustration website . “There’s a lot to be seen there,” she says.
Austin SCBWI comes first with Destination Publication set for Saturday, January 30, 2010.
The one day event features a Caldecott Honor Illustrator (Marla Frazee) and Newberry Honor author Kirby Larson. The lineup also includes the wonderful illustrator Patrice Barton doing portfolio reviews, Mark McVeigh an agent who represents authors, illustrators and graphic novel creators for the adult and children’s markets, and editors Cheryl Klein, Lisa Graff and Stacy Cantor (who did work on all of the Harry Potter books!)
Read more about everyone here. Get the the registration form here. Hurry, the event and only a few portfolio
review sessions are left.
Houston SCBWI has set its conference for Saturday, February 20, 2010. Headliners include acclaimed author of short stories, funny picture books, Native American fiction, and YA Gothic fantasies, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Creative director at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers Patrick Collins and editors Ruta Rimas, Alexandra Cooper and Lisa Ann Sandell. Download their bios, conference info and a registration form here.
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Check out the great drawing instructional videos by Matthew Archambault at Drawing-Tutorials-Online.com
Mark Mitchell teaches children’s book illustration at the Austin Museum of Art Art School and online . The next semester of classes begins at the school’s Laguna Gloria campus next month, with Children’s Book Illustration I, January 27 – March 10, 6-9 p.m.
Children’s Book Illustration II March 23 — April 20, 6-9 p.m.
Mark teaches an online course on drawing and painting for illustration “Make Your Splashes; Make Your Marks!” that is self-paced and starts whenever you’re ready. Learn more here.
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Knowing as we do that drawing children, people and animals is the stock in trade of the children’s book illustrator, let’s draw a difficult animal subject today.
We’ve brought in guest instructor Jon Gnagy to help walk us through it.
Gnagy was the best drawing teacher (maybe the only drawing teacher?) on television. He taught Andy Warhol and millions of other American kids to draw during the 1950’s.
I can’t say that he taught me exactly, though maybe he did, but he was a little advanced. I was all of three years old when my mother (a painter) and I would watch his show together.
But I think he planted lots of seeds and questions in my unconscious. I remember even at that tender age being flabbergasted by his demos. “How does he know this stuff?” I remember asking myself. I still wonder about that.
‘Old School’ drawing doesn’t seem to go out of style. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a courthouse mural by Thomas Hart Benton or a children’s book illustration by Marla Frazee or Tasha Tudor or Robert McCloskey. It just always stays cool. Ask any kid.
The graphic images Marla Frazee renders with such assurance resemble the classic book illustrations of — well, the Jon Gnagy days, the 1950s. They don’t feel ‘dated’ because they bring us kids, people, animals and landscapes that kids (and the kid in us) can relate to. These subjects when rendered capably seem only to accrue in value.
For a better look at Marla’s work, here’s an animated trailer for All the World, a picture book illustrated by Frazee and penned by poet Liz Garton Scanlon.
Liz Garton Scanlon addresses the Austin chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) on a packed second floor of Austin's famous independently owned bookstore, BookPeople.
Yes, I know that both of them and the book and Jon Gnagy, too have been on this blog before. (Good subjects deserve repeated mentions. )
Scanlon and Frazee are scheduled to talk about their work together at the Austin SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) annual conference Destination Publication on Saturday Saturday, January 30, 2010. Caldecott Honor artist Frazee will deliver the keynote for illustrators and also reviewportfolios, as will talented illustrator Patrice Barton.
Find the full conference lowdown and registration form here.
Henry Holt Books for Young Readers Creative Director Patrick Collins will review portfolios a month later at the Houston SCBWI conference.
Mark your calendars for Saturday, February 20, 2010 and download information and a registration form for the Houston conference here.
Author-illustrator Mark Mitchell hosts this blog. Mark teaches children’s book illustration at the Art School at the Austin Museum of Art and through the “Make Your Splashes; Make Your Marks!” online course.
