Hello, friends! It’s been busy these past few weeks, and I finally have a moment to catch my breath. I just finished laying out a booklet celebrating the work of a Dayton, Ohio-area DJ who has now been in the radio business for 50 years! I volunteer design services for his current radio station on occasion, but this project was the most involved piece I have worked on for them. It is a relief to have it finished!
With my plate slightly more clear for the time being, I can turn my focus back to building my portfolio and preparing for the SCBWI Annual Summer Conference in August. My mini assignments from Guiseppe are coming along nicely. I have 6 art directors on my contact spreadsheet and I have begun to make more changes to the website, beginning with the actual web address. No longer am I encumbered by the WordPress branding! It feels more official this way.
I’ve been giving some thought to postcards lately. Illustrators generally send out postcards showcasing their work to publishers around May and September: the peak hiring times for the year. With the first big round of mailing coming up, my #kidlitart chat friends on Twitter spent last Thursday sharing postcard designs, postcards in process, and asking/answering questions about mailing them out.
I won’t be ready to send out cards in May, but I plan to design my postcards and have them printed by the end of July so I can take them with me to the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles this August. Having them there with me will allow me to hand them out to fellow illustrators with whom I want to keep in contact as well as potential agents, editors, and art directors. Also, since I will have them ready by then, I will plan to send my first mailing in September of this year!
A quick side note about #kidlitart chat: I am so glad to have found these people. The information I have gotten has been very helpful, and they really made me feel welcome from day one. I speak up more now than I did at first, but no one ever made me feel like an outsider. I’m looking forward to meeting some of them face-to-face at the SCBWI conference!
saravecchiart.com 