Looking Back (and Merry Christmas!)

It's good to reflect and see personal growth - especially when self-doubt wraps its chilling fingers to strangle creative endeavors. Since I'm currently working through this, I'm setting aside time to applaud the good I've accomplished this year:

1. Sketching has become my friend as I've set aside time each day to do it. Its influence is guiding my fingers in ways they didn't move before.

2. I submitted a couple projects to editors and agents and received personalized rejections that were helpful and confidence-boosting.

3. I submitted five articles to The Bulletin (SCBWI's magazine), had three of them accepted, and one has already been published. The accepted article ideas came from studying children's books, sketching, and experimenting with using textures in my work.

4. An illustration I submitted to SCBWI was published in their most recent Bulletin.

5. An editor approached me about illustrating a Sunday school curriculum. The timing didn't work out this time around, but she said she'll contact me again next year.

6. I met with my amazing critique group every month this year. (Well, maybe I missed a couple near the beginning?) They are wonderful friends, great confidence-boosters, and most helpful in their critiques of my work.

7. Two weeks ago I bought a Wacom Intros Pro (as opposed to the bottom-of-the-line model I was using previously). I already feel an upsurge in the quality of my work. (That pen makes a huge difference!)

It isn't always easy feeling successful in the field I've chosen, but I hope that with continued effort next year will continue to yield results I will feel proud of. To leave you with merry greetings, you've already seen an illustration I created for SVS's 3rd Thursday contest (Santa's reindeer have the flu, so he used . . .). Special thanks to my husband for giving me the idea.

Online critiques to watch (from real instructors)

My last post highlighted a piece I'm submitting for SVS's 3rd Thursday competition. I just finished watching their critique of last month's four pieces, and WOW! The information they offer is so helpful and generous! I'm hooked. I can't wait to watch more of them, but I've got work waiting for me . . .

If these are something you'd like to watch and learn from, here's a link to their youtube channel. Scroll down and look for the 3rd Thursday videos. (There's a lot more great stuff to learn from, too!) And they offer very reasonably priced classes to learn professional techniques.

And since blogposts are boring without something visual, below is a recent page from my sketchbook. Which leads me to ask, have you sketched today? Fifteen minutes a day can go a long way. (Hey, I sound like one of those commercials out there . . .)

Something Completely Different

Okay, so I normally draw cute kids.

But today I got sidetracked into something much more experimental - and it was quick and fun. SVS hosts monthly competitions (this is a link to their website; look for 3rd Thursdays), from which they pick a handful to critique and offer prizes. This month's prompt asks for an Edgar Allan Poe cover featuring his stories. Well here ya go. I have to say that I love sketching, so doing a caricature of Poe was a lot of fun, especially since I didn't have to make him perfect. I also find it great fun experimenting with textures in a way that I might not typically do with my more traditional art. (But maybe I should . . .)

Little Red Take 3

Here's yet another red riding hood, which again took so much longer than I anticipated it would! Keeping things consistent and helping what's most important stand out took some finagling. Hopefully I'll get better (and quicker) at doing this. I'm not sure it works perfectly, but my mind can't process what needs doing at present. If you have any suggestions, I'm open! I'd also love to hear which of the three Red Riding Hood pictures you like best.

Kids and Craft: Making Both Work

This blogpost (http://artonthepage.blogspot.com/2015/10/my-creative-life-motherhood.html) by an author/illustrator friend, Jill Bergman, shares what it means for her to be a mother/author/illustrator. It made me think about an article I wrote months ago (see below). Although I speaks from my own mother/children's book maker perspective, others might glean ideas about making other chosen crafts work. I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

Kids and Craft: Making Both Work

Angela C. Hawkins

For the last ten years, I’ve opted to be a stay-at-home-mom. It’s wonderful, but it does come packaged in creative limitations. I’ve teetered between ignoring my craft until my kids grow older and growing my craft while ignoring my kids. It’s not a one-size-fits-all game, but here’s how I try to balance both:        

Most days have pockets of creative time. A writing professor knew a published stay-at-home mom who nabbed twenty minutes a day to write. Sometimes a mind-numbing break while my kids have napped, snacked, or played is tempting, but I've rarely regretted choosing to create. Much can be done in focused swatches of time.
   

 Notepads are essential. They’ve kept my creativity streaming while I’ve nursed, watched kids, and prepared food. They’ve kept me engaged and ready for those creative time pockets.

Watching kids is productive. Watching my children play has been an opportunity to soak up beautiful memories and improve my writing and illustration. It has flooded my notebook with story ideas, and my artistic mind has captured ways of working light, color, and child-like fun into my illustrations. 

A stay-at-home mom doesn’t have to mean a play-at-home mom. I do play with my kids, but I feel that all day play is misleading and debilitating for all of us. I try to show by example and expectation that lots of happiness can be found through ambition, hard work, sharing, creativity, and productivity.

Learn and create together. Although it takes longer, learning and creating in tandem with littler ones has honed my brainstorming, artistic, researching, and teaching skills.

Learn from kids. I’m often entangled in planning and details. My kids create uninhibitedly, experimenting easily with new ideas and mediums. It reminds me to let go and have more fun.

Daily reading is a boon. It’s important for my kids and my craft to read a lot – and I can accomplish both at once! Reading to them has fine-tuned my understanding of rhythm, rhyme, word choices, and pacing.

Kid perspectives are insightful. While reading together, I observe what engages their attention, finds their chuckle bones, or leaves them distracted. I notice which covers, titles, illustrations, and blurbs reach out to them.

Kids dish out great advice. When I've encountered story and illustration problems, my children offer meticulous advice from the way they see things. Since I am writing for kids, that perspective is a sparkling asset. 

Sharing my work with them is an investment. Not only are my children my greatest fans, but I love how my example inspires them to create. Which inspires me to create. Which inspires them to create. Which . . .

Since my family will always be first, there are days when I set my dreams aside. But with a little thought and lots of perseverance, on most days I can squeeze in both.

Riding Again

Here's another scene from Red Riding Hood. Which took way too long - especially since I don't like it as well as the one below. I like the contrast in the first one better than here. My hope is to make her home light and happy in contrast to what she'll encounter later on, but I feel like something's missing. Still, there are elements that work well. It took a lot of research to make the room and clothing look authentic, and to keep Red Riding Hood looking consistent. I also assumed it would come together quickly after that since I planned to use the same color palate as the other one. And then it took more time than I thought it would to determine which textures to use and where to put them! *sigh* But here it is, and now it's time for something else!

From Start to Finish: Little Red

Growing up, I often copied illustrations I liked (at least the parts in each image I liked best). It became fairly easy to recreate what someone else had already done - which was good practice, but it was also deceptive since it didn't show the illustrator's behind-the-scenes work involved in creating the whole thing (or even that part I loved).

Every illustrator is different, and every project can get more or less attention, but here's the behind my scenes process that went into creating this illustration (each step has correlating pictures), which I may submit it for the 2015 Tomie DePaola SCBWI contest. The prompt asked us to create an 8x8 illustration from a Red Riding Hood scene, with no space inside the illustration intended for text. Tomie's overarching goal is for us to create an illustration he falls in love with, most especially Little Red Riding Hood.

1. The first thing I did was some random brainstorming. Sometimes this works great and I can skip some of the following steps, but since this brainstorming session wasn't creating a character I loved (though I do think the highly characterized little-miss-wonderhood - #3 - is kinda cute), I knew I had to do some research.

2. My random doodles proved that I didn't know how to draw capes very well, so I googled around and did a few studies from various angles.

3. I also felt it would help if I studied how other illustrators have rendered Red Riding Hood, so I did more googling and sketching.

4. Since a lot of those Little-Red-Hoods felt stiff, I wanted to create more action in mine. I tinkered with the idea of having her walking along a log and - you guessed it! - sketched more studies of girls balancing on logs.

5. I chose a sketch I really liked and modeled this riding hood after her, but my wolf sketch (see #9 below) and idea for a layout didn't work with this, so I eventually scrapped this idea and . . .

6. Did more sketching! I thought my Little-Hood in #5 was cute, but I opted to create a European Riding Hood instead so that I could show her hair flowing in the wind. I also considered making her more modern, but since I have a fancy for those old fashioned spin-around dresses I opted for a more traditional look.

7. I loved the action here and almost used this Little Hood, but after re-reading the text prompt Tomie provided, I realized she's not the sort of girl who would recklessly zoom around with basket and goodies spilling out like I'd intended. So I reworked her and came to my . . .

8. Final Little Red.

9. Toward the beginning of this process, I had already sketched the wolf (on the right). I've included a wolf face (on left) that I tried from my imagination so you can see the difference it makes to do your research! The attempt on the left helped me realize that I needed to - once again! - sketch a real wolf to make it look authentic. In the end, I didn't need to do as many sketches since I knew I wanted him to be in the foreground looking over at her, and this came rather quickly.

10. After poking around, I sketched my favorite scenes of woods that might work for this illustration. I eventually used a combination of a couple I liked and added a little cottage to set the stage and add perspective.

11. Using the wonders of modern illustration technology, I brought everything into Painter to scale and place everything where it would deliver the most drama. Then . . .

12. I printed off #11 and retraced it with my lightbox. You'll notice Little Red is left out since I felt she looked great in #8 (and I was afraid of losing some of her freshness by retracing her). I then added her in once I rescanned #12.

13. Using my super-duper Color Inspirations book, I found four color palates I thought might work. I knew I wanted a yellow sky, that Red would be red, and that the forest/wolf would be a more menacing blue. These parameters helped me narrow down what I wanted, and I did some quick studies in Painter with each one. Can you spot the palate I eventually used? 

14. Last of all came my favorite part (or tied for favorite; I really like the sketching part, too): Adding textures and paint! I have a nice library of textures and patterns to choose from and have pointed out the areas where I used them. Not too long ago, my digital illustrations were mostly rendered with Painter's watercolor brushes, but I've since been adding textures - which I feel has changed my illustrations so much! (In a way, the process feels like cheating since it's more of a collage than a painting, but since the end product is what's most important, I choose this method since it creates the  look and feel I'm aiming for.) After applying all the textures, I used some digital watercolor and pastel to add highlights and contrast. Voila!