Tag: colour collective

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I started a post on December 20th, and here I am finally getting something posted. The holidays are behind us, and although we had a good Christmas and New Year celebrations, it has also been a rough time as we dealt with an ongoing illness with my youngest son. Three trips to the doctor later, we were admitted to Nationwide Children’s Hospital with a diagnosis of pneumonia. We spent the weekend in the hospital watching him slowly improve and we got to come home for New Year’s Eve. He is definitely doing much better now!

As many people do, I have been looking to the new year and wondering what it will have in store, as well as reflecting on 2018. This past year was a great year of firsts for my illustration journey. I began this blog, I started my Instagram account, I got involved with SCBWI and the kidlitart chat community on Twitter, I even travelled to Los Angeles to the SCBWI summer conference! I produced dozens of illustrations throughout the year, made lots of new friends, and felt my confidence in my abilities increase.

In 2019, I plan to get back swing of doing colour collective illustrations at least 2x per month, as well as get a few sample pages for a book dummy complete. My biggest step forward that I’m going to work on is mailing out postcards. For real, guys, postcards are going out this year. With a less definite goal in mind, I’m also going to be giving some use to some Christmas gifts I received: some watercolors and a watercolor sketchbook! I have missed traditional media and look forward to getting familiar with a new medium.

What this means for me is compiling my mailing list! I am going to try to go back to what Giuseppe Castellano suggested: add three names to your list per week. We will see how many I can come up with.

The near year holds a lot of opportunities for us all! What are some attainable goals you have for yourself? Don’t be afraid to dream big!

by Categories: New Experiences, Personal LifeTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

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!

by Categories: Personal LifeTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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!

by Categories: New ExperiencesTags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment