picture books

Illustration – by Hand? or Digital?

/ still a dreamer / 4 Comments

Let me say I’ve always been a draw-it-over-at-that-desk and scan-it-over-at-this-desk kind of gal. I know the use of digital illustration has soared over the last oh-so-many years. But what I still don’t know is how do I feel about it for children’s books? I realize this is a complex question and a pretty big subject. Especially in terms of degree.

This week my drawings were due for Just Frenchies magazine, a quarterly publication that features my artwork/illustration. Although this is generally not detailed illustration work, being more of a spot art nature, I decided I would draw, (at that desk), and then play with it in Photoshop, (at this desk.) As I work in Photoshop daily for my business, I am of the opinion that you could work in it for the rest of your life and still not have scratched the surface.

Anyway, here are 2 samples of very simple illustration play in Photoshop. In each case, I created the sketches in simple pen and ink. I scanned and brought them into Photoshop where I used several tools. First, the paintbrush at a reduced opacity in several colors, then darker shades to create some very simple shadowing. Then I used the burn tool to enrich some of the lines where the painting had washed them out to return the depth, and finally a little brightening and/or contrast.

Then I ventured into the filters and played around with a variety that appealed to me, adjusting them further within each filter. Again, this is pretty basic stuff. I liked 2 different filters for the 2 different drawings and settled on the Fresco filter for the Frenchie profile and the Watercolor filter for the pup sitting.

So what do you think? Like the results? Or do you prefer the original loose, pen and ink sketch?

What do you think about digital art in children’s book illustration? Like it? Prefer hand-drawn?

p.s. Since I wrote this post, I realized the illustrations in one of my favorite picture books are all digital and totally amazing – Pete & Pickles by Berkeley Breathed.

Frozen in Space – Post NJ SCBWI Conference

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

It’s hard to believe that just one week ago today life as we knew it had totally changed for a period of 48 magical hours. Stressful – but magical hours. Friday, June 4th and Saturday, June 5th was the NJ SCBWI Annual Conference, held this year at the Princeton Regency Hyatt.

The Hyatt atrium, empty above, was abuzz with NJ SCBWI Conference participants – editors, agents, speakers, attendees, organizers, volunteers and a very helpful Hyatt staff. That area with tables of four at the forefront was our registration area with an endless stream of people coming in to be greeted and given their materials. The fairy-lighted area to the rear left and below was our open buffet dinner area Friday night, and the step-up areas with small tables at rear right were filled with agents and editors giving critiques. On the lower level, workshops, first page sessions and intensives were going on, all opening to a wide center aisle where illustrators had displayed their work in a juried art show. Upstairs, outside of the dining areas, a portfolio display, book signing and auction took turns  over the two days.

It was a jam-packed, enlightening two days, preceded by days and weeks of stressful preparations and anticipation. NJ SCBWI‘s first year in the Hyatt was a great success, thanks to RA, Kathy Temean and Assistant RA, Laurie Wallmark, bolstered by volunteers at every turn.

So how come it’s taken one full week to blog about this inspiring event? Initially, exhaustion. I know I’m not the only one who simply crashed on Sunday. I barely had the energy, though I did it anyway, to start preparation of an MS with a couple illustrations to send to the agent who critiqued me. Tired as I was on Sunday, I elected to wait until Monday with some more rest behind me to make sure I sounded literate. And sent that off. Then starting the work of revising another MS which was critiqued by that agent and also the editors in a First Page Session for a submission.

What made it more difficult for me … and I suspect for others in my shoes … is that Monday morning I have to fold up my dream and tuck it away neatly while I go back to work. Problem was that this time, that dream was not about to stay folded away neatly, nor was it going to wait ’til the end of the day when I could give it some attention. Nope. It kept teasing and wheedling and enticing and trying its best to make me stop working and pay it some serious attention. “Look at me!” said my dream. “You know you want to!”

I was still tired for a good part of the week, but worse off, I was frozen in space.

Both needing and wanting to work, I was feeling a pull stronger than ever to turn around and work on my manuscript and a new very rough dummy.  (I do love my work, but as I’m self-employed, if I don’t do it, no one else does and I don’t make any money!) Half the time I felt like the rope in a tug of war. Of course, I ultimately and ever-so-responsibly settled down and attended to my graphics work, and came up with some pretty cool stuff, and started my children’s book work after dinner.

However, I notice that dream has developed quite a mouth on it.

Okay, it’s Friday. You talkin’ to me? Let’s do it!

What I’ve Been Reading …

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

Or perhaps I should say what I’ve been reading, but haven’t been blogging about. It seems there are just times when blogging about books isn’t as compelling as reading them and moving on to the next one. Here’s my book list over the last few months from the most recent back …

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli – what a wonderful, extraordinarily well-written YA novel.  Truly this book deserves to be written about at great length, (and I’m sure has been elsewhere on the web), but as this being only the second of Jerry Spinelli’s books I’ve read, I must say how impressed I am. Told in the first person by a child who only knows his name to be stop thief, the tale takes place in 1939 during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. How the lives of everyone changed as the Jackboots settled in the city, as Jews and others were herded into the newly-created ghetto and later forced onto trains, as people slowly starved, as smugglers were hung, and friends made and lost is what the author describes. Stop thief goes through many transformations during this time, including being given a history as a gypsy to try and protect him, and observes the horrors of the Nazi occupation. Yet somehow, these horrors became an integral part of everyday life in ways I cannot imagine, and the story is seamlessly told through the eyes of this child. Milkweed is so different from The Book Thief, and seemed so much more accessible to me, for lack of a better word. I highly recommend it.

Bunnicula, The Howliday Inn and The Celery Stalks at Midnight by James Howe (and Deborah Howe in Bunnicula only) – I had expected more of Bunnicula, the vampire bunny, but in these three consecutive middle grade mysteries, each becomes better than the previous with funny dog and cat characters trying to solve them. The best of the three for me was The Howliday Inn, as it was the most complex and the humor was getting better, too.

Great Joy – Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline – I picked this picture book up for the magnificent illustrations, but was disappointed in the story. And I really do enjoy DiCamillo’s writing. Something was missing for me, but the illos were fabulous.

Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins – this YA novel is a Newbery winner. For me, it wasn’t as absorbing as many of the other YA novels I’ve been reading, but it was a very true-to-life depiction of  that awkward time when kids grow into adolescents. It takes place in the 60’s, and shows the growth of several young boys and girls and their relationships. Not heavy on plot, but nice – and nicely drawn –  characters.

Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman – this was unexpected as I hadn’t realized it would be a graphic novel/picture book! For some reason I had expected a YA novel like The Graveyard Book (yet to be read). However, I loved the story and the fabulous illustrations by Dave McKean, who also did Coraline, and which really make this book come alive.

Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen – a story of an abused woman, who finally reaches out to get help to save her life, taking her son with her as well. This help takes place in being given another identity and being relocated in another part of the country by a little publicized agency who specializes in helping abused women. However, Fran Benedetto cannot escape her police officer husband forever as he wants his 10 year old son back, and somewhere, in an untold story behind hers, is searching for both of them. This book is hard to put down, and recounts, through her eyes, the “accidents” that she can no longer bear nor justify to others, and her new life which almost seems normal. The abuse is harrowing and painful to read at times, and her new life is always overshadowed for the reader with the anxiety of Bobby finding her. A good read.

Heaven Eyes by David Almond – a YA novel by one of my favorite authors. Almond’s characters and plots are so uniquely his own. There is a magic threading through all of his stories which happens to resonate with something in me every time without fail. Heaven Eyes is a child who is living with an elderly man who saved her from the muck outside a deserted industrial site. Three runaways from an orphanage up the river land on the edge of the brackish mud adjacent to where she lives, and their intertwining stories unfold slowly to reveal a deeply disturbed man and a child who’s been given a history not based in reality. The three orphans are well-drawn characters in their own right with their own history, and find drama and revelation in their encounter with Heaven Eyes and Grandpa. Ultimately, they  must decide to stay in an unreal environment or hope to return to the world from which they came, bringing Heaven Eyes and her spirituality with them. A Fantastic read, (and I’m truly not doing it justice here.)

No Small Thing by Natalie Ghent – a middle-grade novel about 3 children who acquire an unwanted pony during very rough times for their family. Their mother tries to keep it together after their father walked out on them, profoundly affecting them all. It is a story in part about the responsibilities of owning a pet, but also of the children’s relationships, caring for one another and managing their lives together. Some good spots, but for me, was just OK.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs – from the Alpha and Omega Series. Fabulous. The first Briggs novel I read was Moon Called, and this is a storyteller whose books I cannot put down!

During this time I am reading one or more metaphysical books on an ongoing basis, but that, for another time …

Scarecrow’s Dance – Jane Yolen and Bagram Ibatoulline

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When I first planned on buying this book, I admit it was largely for the magnificent illustrations of Bagram Ibatoulline. I first came across Scarecrow’s Dance as a yet-unbound copy and part of an illustrating exercise at the NJ SCBWI Illustrators’ Intensive in 2008.  I was, and still am, utterly entranced by the rich, yet soft, colors at dusk, and the beauty Ibatoulline has created in the cornfields and farm setting. If you are an illustrator or one who appreciates excellence in illustration, this book is worth the cost of that alone. And the story, in the brief exposure I had to it at that time, was so touching as to bring me to tears, and it still does.

I eagerly awaited it’s publication with my primary interest in the art. It finally arrived so I could appreciate both story and text. Jane Yolen is the author of Scarecrow’s Dance, and recipient of the Caldecott Medal for Owl Moon, and many, many other awards in her rich and extensive writing career for children. As I examined this book more closely, several thoughts did cross my mind … as beautiful as I found the illustrations, would they appeal to the target age group, 4 – 8? Would a child that age lose interest in the dusky light’s subtlety on page after page? Would a barn described “as red as blood” be disturbing to a small child? Might some parents find both a child and scarecrow kneeling and praying to God a predominantly Christian message they may not wish to read to their child in a picture book story?

I don’t actually know the answers to these. I found the overriding message to be of the greatest importance, and that is finding who we are and knowing our place in the world to be unique and one of value. I think a parent reading this story to a child with the feeling Yolen has put into it, will easily impart that as the primary message, and it is very beautifully done in both word and image.

I visited Jane Yolen’s web site, and found a wonderful section just for us writers – lots of sound advice to guide us on our journey to becoming not just published, but still sane when we get there. Kathy Temean, the RA of NJ SCBWI, also posted 20 Yolen writing tips as transcribed from the recent SCBWI Conference in New York. All great stuff.

And then, Bagram Ibatoulline. I kiss the ground this illustrator walks on. His work is simply magnificent. In addition to Scarecrow’s Dance, he has done two books by Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Toulane and Great Joy. He illustrated a beautiful book, Crow Call, by Lois Lowry, The Serpent Came to Gloucester, and many, many others. Next time you’re in a bookstore, I highly recommend you take a look at Ibatoulline’s work.

Outstanding Picture Book – Pete & Pickles

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Pete & Pickles, written by Berkeley Breathed, is one of the most touching picture book stories I know. It is the tale of a very proper pig, Pete, and a very free-spirited elephant, Pickles. The story is about friendship, forgiveness, healing, joy, and accepting the differences in others. But believe me, even this does not do justice to this wonderful book.

Pete, mourning the death of his pig wife, Paprika, finds himself, in the middle of a stormy night, with an escaped circus elephant hiding in his home. Pickles has made a muddy mess from the rainstorm. Pete cannot accept his overly tidy life being sullied. When the nasty circus clown comes to collect the terrified elephant, who had begged Pete for help, he just points in disdain.  Yet she smiles at him as she’s led away.  As Pete disinfects his home, he finds Pickles has left him a gift, and he gets to thinking. He reroutes his daily stroll into town to find Pickles.

A rescue ensues, and a friendship grows between the very unlikely pair. One of my favorite illustrations is that of Pete coming out in his pajamas to find Pickles doing Tai Chi in dawn’s glowing light.  May I say, the illustrations are infused with the richest of color with all the little quirky touches you’d expect from Opus’ creator. On some pages there are also simple 2-color, pen and ink spot illustrations. The whole thing is just brilliant, and I am deeply touched each time I re-read this story.

But here’s what most reviews never mention … Breathed is tuned in to the horrific abuse suffered by elephants in the circus, and reveals it both subtly and on a level that children can relate to without being overwhelmed. When the evil looking clown stands in the entryway shadows to get Pickles, there is a glint on the metal bullhook in his hand. When Pete goes into Pickles’ tent, he finds her chained with heavy padlocks. She is not chained in the way circus elephants really are – chained standing in place 23 hours a day – but in a way which will engender empathy from a child to see so lovable an animal be both shackled and frightened in a picture book way.  Adults unaware of the plight of circus elephants will probably never notice these touches, but for those of us who are, we can be grateful that someone has spoken for them in a children’s book.

Berkeley Breathed went up in my estimation X10 for not only writing a fabulous story in Pete & Pickles, but for opening the door to a child’s compassion for his or her fellow creatures. This is truly a must-have if you are a lover of children’s books – a parent, a writer, lover of fabulous illustrations, fan of Berkeley Breathed – or a lover of animals.

p.s. And a big thank you to one of my fellow PB writers, Paola, who so insightfully gave this to me as a gift.
p.p.s. Should you wish to know more about the abuse of circus elephants, you can check out a video showing the gratuitous violence inflicted by sadistic handlers in just one Ringling Brothers pre-show incident. This is not for children.