Tag: challenge

From “It’s Gonna Be May” to “Bye Bye Bye”

It seems like just yesterday when the unceasing slew of “It’s gonna be May” Justin Timberlake memes were flooding my Facebook feed, and here we are over halfway through the month! What happened?! Time is flying by, and I have realized that I need to get a plan put in place to make sure I have things done in time.

First on my to-do list is sourcing a physical portfolio to take with me to the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles. I paid money to be in the portfolio showcase there, and I’m going to be kicking myself if I don’t have something to put in it. I think I want something with a hard cover and a screwpost binding system so I can easily update it in the future.

I also need to work on deciding which pieces I want in my portfolio and getting them printed and mounted so they look professional. I’ll probably use a few from the portfolio I presented Giuseppe Castellano at my review with him, but I have done a few more things since then that I’ve been quite happy with.

On that note, I have not done as much work lately as I was doing back in March and April, and I need to kick it back into high gear! I feel like I need to be making more work to keep improving. I don’t want to slow down! I have been participating in Mermay 2018 to an extent, but I have not been able to maintain my one-a-day pace. I have been using prompts from artist Jane Davenport to help give me starting points for each drawing. Here is a sampling of what I have done:

Hello Sailor
Speckles and Freckles
Treasure Chest
Stargazing siren
Make a Splash
Landlocked

With May being such a busy month for us, I have not been keeping up with my color collective posts quite as well. I intend to dive back into those in a week or two. For now, I am doing occasional mermay drawings and continuing work on my woodsy piece. I think it’s coming along quite nicely!

After a few weeks of taking a break from it, I am also back to chipping away at a piece Giuseppe described as “ambitious.” There will be a total of 22 people in the scene by the time it’s done! Whew. I started this back in March as a challenge piece for myself. I don’t usually have more than one figure in a drawing, and I wanted to create a group scene. Group indeed. It is taking me a very long time! I go through periods of getting a lot done on it and then not touching it for a while. Here is what that looks like so far:

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

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Spring Weather Has Me Singing!

Happy Wednesday, friends!

Spring weather has finally graced Ohio with its presence, and life has been good lately. I think we may be on the verge of getting my baby boy to sleep more. As any parent can tell you, this is tremendously exciting news. However, we are also about to transition him to his own room, since his crazy mobility means the bassinet in the bedroom isn’t going to cut it very much longer. Those transitions are always rough, so I’m not expecting to really see more sleep for some time longer. Time will tell, I suppose.

I spent part of the weekend at my parents’ farm, which was nice. We hadn’t been down in months, and we couldn’t have picked a better weekend for it. Sunshine and farm activities drew us outdoors. We even got to meet a new baby goat from a nearby friend!

May is shaping up to be a busy month, but I am trying to stay on target with my illustrations! I have kept up with colour collective challenges so far, and am also making progress on a piece that I am excited to finish.

As a child, I always thought the woods seemed magical. Something about the speckled light filtering in through the green leaves overhead made me feel like I was in a story book. I loved a good forest, but the thing that really made me fall in love was finding a stream, creek, or river running through the woods. I could spend hours there taking in the sounds of the water, watching mini-waterfalls, making and breaking tiny dams made from leaves and twigs, and (on warm days) splashing my feet. There was a colour collective challenge a few weeks back that was green. I roughly sketched out this picture before deciding that the green from the challenge was not the right color for this image in my mind, but this drawing really spoke out to me, even in sketch form. I kept the sketch, knowing I’d come back to it eventually. I have now officially started work on it! Here is the work in progress:

The boy in the drawing is inspired by my kids, whom I hope will one day find the imagination-stirring wonder that I found in these kinds of places. I hope you find it too! In the midst of our busy lives this month, let’s try to take time to put ourselves in nature and take it in. It’s good for the body, and good for the soul. If you’re reading this, I would love to see the places you take yourself this month! I’ll post mine on Instagram with #natureplace.

Happy venturing!

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Oh So Social!

Hello again, friends!

This past week has felt like a flurry of activity as I did the legwork to get my media presence started. I know I want to stay pretty active on my Instagram and Twitter feeds in order to give people a reason to want to follow me and see what I’ve got going on, so I have started to find some different things to participate in and get myself involved! Here is what I have found so far:

#kidlitart

This hashtag was one I had heard tell of on Shawna JC Tenney’s Stories Unbound podcast. It is used throughout the week on relevant posts by those involved in the children’s literature community: art directors, editors, illustrators, kid lit enthusiasts, etc. They hold a more “organized” discussion once a week on Thursdays at 9pm EST. They announce a general topic for the week’s discussion, but that’s about as organized as it gets.I attended part of the chat this past Thursday (I had a wakeful baby, so I missed part of it), and found that while it was a little challenging to follow the whole thing, there was a lot of useful information being given! I’ll definitely keep tuning in and maybe even say more than just one thing. We’ll see. I’m still just dipping my toe in there.

Even with my limited time in this community, I have already learned new things, found new people to follow, and even gained a couple of followers myself! I may not have as much experience as some of these people, but everyone has been very welcoming and I look forward to getting more deeply rooted here.

Colour Collective

colour collective eminence
My first entry was for last week’s color, “Eminence.” (It’s the purple of her dress.)

This is a weekly challenge I came across on Twitter. I noticed one of the posters in the #kidlitart chat had this hashtag recurring in many of her pieces she posted on her account, so I did some searching and found there was a twitter account with this name that asks you to create an art piece using their selected color of the week. They post the color for the coming week each Saturday and ask that you post your finished piece on Friday at 19:30 GMT (7:30pm EST, my time).

This week’s color is Laurel Green. I finished my piece already, so I’m wondering if I should put more detail into it or if I should try to crank out another piece for the week. Or do I just leave it alone and put my efforts towards the other challenge:

#BAPC18

I found this on the kidlitart blog, and it couldn’t have come at a better time! Starting with this past February and running through July, they announce a prompt each month to create a piece to add to your illustration portfolio. It encourages you to get out of your comfort zones and push yourself. What excellent timing that I would find this just one month into the challenge as I’m trying to build my portfolio and I’m not sure what to make!

This month’s challenge is to draw a crowd scene showing a range of diverse characters, ages, and races. I didn’t vary the races as much as maybe some people will, but it made sense to do it that way for the scene I decided to make. I’m going to be starting to post some previews of the coming piece on Instagram and Twitter here soon. One may already be there by the time you see this!

What prompts do you follow to keep yourself creating? What communities are you a part of that help you grow and support you? I’d love to hear from you!

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The Year of Me

Stop right there. I know what you’re thinking. “Year of her? What is she, some sort of self-obsessed millennial traipsing through life on a journey of self-discovery?” To which I answer: Nay! Well, ok. Sorta.

What I mean is that this is the year that I take life by the horns and say

Give me the best of what you have to give me!

This is not to say that I have been dealt a bad hand by any means. I love my husband, my kids, my family, and my friends. I work a steady job in an office filled with kind people. The happy truth is that I’m comfortable. Therein lies the challenge.

You see, there are two ways that life will get the best of you instead of the other way around. The more obvious of the two is by overwhelming you. Life can leave you feeling like it is all you can do just to keep yourself above water. If you let it, the business of life will keep you so busy that you will lose sight of your dreams. You tell yourself that you can do nothing more than stay afloat, and so that is all that you do.

The sneakier way life gets the best of you is by making you comfortable. Of course, comfort in and of itself is not a bad thing. I love being comfortable. Just ask my collection of lounge pants. But comfort can lull you into complacency. You get comfortable in your circumstances and say to yourself “Life is good here. I need nothing more than this.” Taking the risks necessary to reach a goal is scary. Putting in the work to achieve your dreams is hard. But I believe Theodore Roosevelt had something to say on that matter:

Theodore Roosevelt quote

My comfortable life and I could drift through the years and be enjoyable, but that is not what I want for myself. I want to look back and see how I put in the effort and challenged myself to be the best of who I am. This year I will open myself and my art up to the public, build an illustration portfolio, start a social media presence, and attend a conference for the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators! It’s a lot to do, but it is what needs done to help reach my goal of breaking into the kid lit industry.

I’m hoping to make some friends along the way, so please feel free to comment and let me know who you, what you’re all about, and where you are in your journey towards your best you! Also (shameless plug here), follow me on Instagram @saravecchiart and on Twitter @saravecchiart to see sketches, projects, and insights into my life!

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