On Art and Ears

"Draw from life" 
...is a phrase that every kind of artist, weather writing, dancing or drawing hears as they lean to create art.

It generally means that as we create art we need to see the life around us and put in what we create so there is truth in the stories we tell. Then people can relate to it, understand it, and probably love it.

But I want to talk about "drawing from life" in a slightly more literal sense.

A Memory
When I was in college we often had professional artists come to visit to teach us stuff, be cool and generally inspire us with the awe of what we could become. One of those was Walter Rane. It's safe to say he is my favorite artist today who paints religious themed paintings. I recommended giving his site a look

As part of his visit he attended my figure drawing class and drew with us. I remember the moment I sneaked up a little ways behind him with my friends and had a look at his drawing. He had chosen a spot to sit that gave him a view of the model's back, and  more importantly the back of her head. This is a place that we as students probably had shunned wanting to draw interesting things like the face.

I remember looking at that drawing and seeing how he had drawn the back of the model's ear. It was amazing! In that moment I realized that even though I often drew while looking at the model I let my brain fill in the pieces it wanted to with out really seeing the full of life details that were right in front of me. I was drawing ears from my head. Lame.

This Sunday
I was at church drawing the people around me. Something I often do as I listen, but this week I decided to focus on certain details. I started with hair and moved onto ears. That's when I remembered my ear experience from college. I don't know how well I've applied this lesson to my art. I hope I can do a much better job "drawing from life" as I move forward as an artist.

Here is the sketchbook page from Sunday

"Draw from life"
For the visual artists the phrase has two meanings and if we take full advantage of both of them I think we can't help but create amazing art.

A Short-y About Facebook Pages

Last week my wonderful artist friend Shawna directed me to this post about Facebook Pages.

I've been on the fence about creating a page for a while but it helped me make up my mind.

Here is my new page
http://www.facebook.com/ManelleOliphantIllustration

 

I have some pretty fun things planned for it and my website. I'm planning some fun thing especially for kids so if you know one keep them in mind and stay tuned.

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From Thumbnail to Sketch

Weeks ago I did a couple posts about the thumbnail process. (Post 1, Post 2)

Now I'll show you how I translate the thumbnail drawing into a sketch that will later be the drawing for the final paining.

There is always a lot of stuff to figure out in the thumbnail process. I decided for this project to go with a portrait orientation because it works better for to format the eBook for all devices. After making that decision it was much easier to work out the composition for each page. (composition= how you arrange the elements on the page)

For example if we take the first part of the Snow-white story the good queen pricks her finger, there are a lot of different ways to show this. Here are some of my ideas. (also seen in previous thumbnail post #2)

I decided to go with the circled one because I liked the gesture and the framing of the queen. I also felt it was a good way to open almost like you are coming into the story through the window. The story doesn't specifically say if the queen is already pregnant but it implies she is and I went with it.

After I get the thumbnail drawing I like I draw it larger. In art school they taught us to create a rough drawing next. Basically a larger version of the thumbnail but still really rough. This process hasn't really worked for me, I needed to be more attached to what I was drawing to get something I liked in the end.

So, I usually jump into what often becomes the finished drawing. But I always have in the back of my mind that I might have to redraw the whole thing. So there is an attachment balance somewhere. I have to love it enough to put my all into the drawing, and be ready to scrap the whole thing if need be.

Here is the finished drawing that goes with this thumbnail.

 

 

There is a possibility I will make some slight changes before I go to painting but for the most part this drawing will be what becomes the final art.

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The Winners are...

First of all. You guys are great. This was the most successful giveaway I've had. I've loved reading your comments and hearing what prints in my shop you like.

Also as you may have noticed we got my blog up to 200 follows. Thanks! I am really working hard to create content that many people will like. I hope you will find value in it and continue to follow as I move forward.

Ok Now for the Winners.

The first prize which is a choice of print from my shop goes to Diana!
She chose the Pandora's Box print.

And because we got up to 200 followers I have some runner up prizes. (that's right plural)

The runner up prize is a Cadee and Cat print.

They are a very limited edition print and I have three left. They are printed on epson velvet paper and signed by me.

The winner of those are:
Vicki
Celia Carpenter Rangitsch
and burmmy77

To claim your prize email me illustration(at)manelleoliphant(dot)com. I need your name and shipping address. And I will send them out.

Congratulations Winners.

Thanks all of you for participating and commenting. I don't hear from readers a ton and it is nice to know you are out there.

p.s. don't forget to check back tomorrow for the next page of the Ruby and the Skateboard blog a story.

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Ruby and the Skateboard

Next Page >

Here it is. The first page of my next blog a story. For those of you that don't know that is where I publish a picture book story a page at a time on my blog. My husband helped with this one. It will update every Tuesday and Thursday. My regular posts on Wednesdays will continue.

I hope you enjoy it.

Check back tomorrow for my 200th blog post wherein there will be a giveaway.

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Flying Puppet Magician

This week my blog post is just a fun illustration. It started out as something for the Illustration Friday theme this week but turned into this. It doesn't have much to do with the theme but I like it anyway.

And because I'm having so much fun with it lately I of course made it into a print, and other fun things at my society6 store.

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Wood Elves Returning to the Undying Lands for Illustration Friday

Here is a quick image of Tolkien's wood elves returning to the undying lands. 

Here it is in Black and White.

And just for fun I made it available as a print, laptop skin, or iphone cover at society6. 

 

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Does the author hire the illustrator?

No. Not usually.

The publisher does actually. In my vast experience illustrating children's book (it's possible I am exaggerating there.) I've only talked to the author once by email, and that was after the book had been released.

Here is the rundown of the illustrating a picture book process. No author involved on my end.

First we spend time sending our illustrations out into the ether of the publishing world and trying to make our website portfolios awesome. More on that here: "How Illustrators Get Work".

Eventually a publisher is going to email or call. For example lets call them Peachtree Publishers in Georgia.

They say, "Hi, how do you say your name?"
I say,  "Mə-nɜl" (Thank you Dashbo's math for help with the phonetics)
They say, "Hi Manelle, we have a project that we would like you to illustrate..."

usually a description of the project follows in this case lets say just for fun it's three board books (cardboard baby books) called In the Garden, At the Beach, and In the Woods, all written by Elizabeth Spurr

I say "Sounds interesting, send me more info."

There is a lot of discussion and emailing. Eventually if I'm taking the job, I get the contract and sign it. The contract will have deadlines, my rights and the publishers which are different for each project, what I'm getting paid and the deadlines for the project.  As you can see this can be a long process.

By this point I have usually seen the manuscript and once the contract is squared away it's finally time to draw. 

The first two things I do, kinda simultaneously, are work on the characters and the thumbnail drawings.

I take the manuscript and have a look at it. In this case it was already broken up by page so I just had to think of how to depict it. This is where I use my thumbnail process. (find more about that here and here)

Here is a picture of the thumbnails I did for "In the Garden"

Here is my original design for the main boy character in the book

After I get the characters figured and the plan for each page of the book I start to draw more detailed sketches.

Here it the first sketch I did for the first spread of the book. (what's a spread?) The words on this page are "Sun. Sky. Tree. Shade."

 This is the original thumbnail of that page

After I have more detailed sketches of the the whole book I send it to the editor and art director and I wait.

hum. hum. hum. la. la. thisisuswating....

Depending on the project you could wait for days or months. (Inevitably they will always get back to you at an inconvenient time, like for example four weeks before your wedding when you still don't have a dress yet. But they are usually willing to work with you. Life Happens)

wearestillwaiting and then...

I get an email that has changes.

I always know it is coming but I always get angry about the changes that are suggested. It's silly. Most of the time I try to be pretty good at keeping my feelings to myself, knowing if I give it time I'll be fine. The rest of the time I hope the people I'm working with on the publishing end are used to working with crazy illustrators and don't get offended or fire me.

In this case they wanted to see changes in the look of the main character, the size of the book, and some other small things.

I liked my first little boy and most frustrated about changing him. But had to admit to myself after we redesigned the little guy that the new boy was better.

Here he is,

and here is the new sketch of the first spread.

Next I get these sketches approved again.

In this case when I heard back there were little if any changes and I had the go ahead to do the painting. I'll talk more about the process later on. But here is my finished painting.

The book comes out May 1st and if you would like you can pre-order it now. In the woods comes this fall, and at the beach next spring.


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How illustrators get work.

When I people and tell them what I do I often get asked, "How do you get a job illustrating a children's book, do you advertise?"

Well here is a quick overview on one way a freelance children's illustrator can get work.

First things first. 
Create a great portfolio. I'm not going to go into that here. But here are some places where you can find some great tips on creating a professional portfolio.
Paper Wings Podcast
Escape From Illustraiton Island

Next put your portfolio online. 
In ancient days I heard illustrators went to New York and other famous places where art directors work to show their portfolios. I think you can still do that. I did once. Even if you do this you can't not have an online portfolio.

Below are a couple of suggestions of places where you can create beautiful online portfolios. There are many though so do your research.
wix.com
Behance Network

Now you have to get people to look at your stuff.
Or in other words advertise.
The most common way to do this is by sending postcards with one of your fantastic illustrations to people you hope will hire you.

My Most Recent Mailer

I use gotprint.com to create my postcard. They are cheap as free for 4x6 postcards and I like the quality well enough.

Get a mailing list together. 
This process takes a long time to do right. Make sure to look for publishers that publish stuff that they might actually hire you for. For example if you draw only children don't send mailers to a publisher that only publishes fantasy for teens.


SCBWI has a resource for this if you are a member or you can find The Children's Writers and Illustrators Market and get contacts from here. I usually get it from the library as it changes every year but you can also find it on amazon.



Be consistent with your mailers.
I heard an illustrator speak once and he said it seems to take an art director about five times of seeing his work before he remembers you. So you can't send out one mailer every 18 months and expect it to be a huge success.

Mailer Tip: Get all mailers for the year ready to go at one time.

I learned this watching my mom send mailers for her Real Estate business. (Quick shout out to my mom. She is an awesome Real Estate Agent. Sold me my house and did a great job. Looking to buy or sell in Utah? Give her a call. ok back to business) She gets all her mailers for one year ready at a time, and then files them ready to drop in the mail box.

If you can afford to do this I highly recommend it. Choose how many mailers you are going to send out in the year set some time aside and create the art. (Or even better use art that you've used on a recent published project.) Order, address and stamp all of them at once. Then label each with the month that it needs to be sent out and you are all set. When the time comes you can just drop them in in the post.

p.s. If you do buy the stamps all at once be sure to plan for any postage price increases that may be on the way.

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10,000 Hours

Frogs have nothing to do with this post.

In the book outliers there is a chapter about how people that "outlie" (I don't think that is actually a word but you'll have to get over it.) in their particular fields always have 10,000 hours doing that thing before they really succeed at it.



At my recent illustration conference (I know I keep talking about it but this is my last post on it for now) I met a guy with at least 10000 hours drawing stories. He told a story about getting his first book published that went something like this:

 "My friend and I had this story we worked on and I did the illustrations and we showed it to an agent and he sold it to a publisher. Now I have a contract for my second book. The End"

My first thought was, "wow, I wish it would work like that for me."

My second thought was "Wait, there must be more to his story."

There was. It turned out this man was the writer and illustrator of a syndicated comic strip for about five years. He totally had 10,000 story writing hours in before he wrote illustrated and published a children's book, seemingly just like that.

His name is Mark Pett. Probably some of you have heard of him.

I'm pretty sure I have 10,000 drawing hours. But I also want the story writing and illustrating hours. Thus very soon. (although I don't have an exact date yet) I will be starting a new blogastory (that link goes to my first attempt). That's the plan.

On what do you want to get your 10,000 hours?


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Ebook Thoughts

At the recent illustration conference in bountiful we heard Will Terry talk about ebooks. He had some great things to say about creating and selling them. Instead of me recapping it I'm just going to post his video about it here.

This was basically his presentation now here for all of you to enjoy.




And If you need some info on creating ebooks you can also check out this post on Julie Olsen's blog.
She has step by step instructions on how she created her ebook.

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100 Picture Books

At the BDAC illustration conference we got to hear picture book author Anne Bowen talk about picture book writing. (she's very good, check out her books)

This is the best picture I got of her. She is in the scarf.

She mentioned hearing somewhere that a person should read 100 picture books before they try to write one. Now, I am sure in my time I have read at least that many. But it can't hurt to do it again.

I decided to read the 100 books and pay special attention to the writing. Normally I pay most of the attention to the illustrations so this was a bit of exercise for me.

I started checking books out at the library and reading them. I picked books randomly off the shelves making sure not to judge by the illustration or how well known the book is.

I haven't gotten through the whole hundred but here are some of my over all observations so far.

First: I noticed that I don't like a lot of picture books.

Second: Books that have gotten, or are getting, a lot of attention usually deserve it, especially when compared to all the other books out there.

Third: The shorter the text the better I like it. When I look at a picture book I imagine reading it out loud to a child. If it's too wordy I don't think I would get through with out skipping parts. The shorter tighter stories also felt more fun and less weighed down by words. 

I also enjoyed the books that have a narrative story rather than those that were more of a list type book. But I think the list books tended to have a better rhythm and rhyme scheme in their writing.

Here are some of my favorites so far.



I felt like each of these books have fun tight text, told a great story, and worked well with the illustrations. 

What kinds of things have any of you discovered about picture book writing?


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Drawing Children

at the recent SCBWI Illustration conference I attended we heard my friend Sherry talk about drawing children. Here is a couple of thoughts about her lecture from what I can remember and from my notes.

A Quick Overview On Drawing Children
Normally we say an adult is about eight heads tall.
A baby would be about four heads tall, and 12 year old about seven.

A four year old is about half the size of an adult and a 12 year old 3/4 the size.

of course these are all idealized proportions and they all depend on the person or character you are drawing.

Learning to Draw Children
The best way to to learn to draw children and teenagers is, of course, to look at real ones and draw them. When you do, look at what is different about each one not what is similar.

She mentioned that in her studies of different aged grade school kids the second graders were the most enthusiastic and excited about everything.

When you are drawing/designing a character or illustration ask yourself:
Have I left it alone and come back?
Have I lived with the character for a while?
Is this the best angle?
Is it a nice silhouette?
Is is well designed?
Do I like it?
Does my second grade self like it?

She also recommend James Gurney's blog. Which recommendation I second, having just now got sucked in reading this post.

It was fun to hear Sherry's talk and focus a little more on drawing children. We also had a chance to practice later on that day.

One kids sketch. See another here

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New Prints and...

First of all I want to let you know that three new prints are available in my print shop.

Snow White

Sailing

Apprentice

Next I have a quick note to say that from now on my posts are going to be on Wednesday. (hence here is one on Wednesday)

And C
I am introducing a new part to my blog that I want to call This has nothing to do with art. When you see that heading you can know that what follows will have nothing to do with art. It may have nothing to do with anything... I get to decide. yea. fun.

This has nothing to do with art

I watched this Tedtalk yesterday and really liked it. It has nothing to do with art but I admit that in a lot of way I can relate the ideas to being creative. I think it's worth a watch. (side note: I believe there is some swearing, you've been warned.)



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A Note on Fairy Tales

Little Mermaid

I love fairy tales. I remember sitting down with my family every Sunday night to watch Shelly Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre on our pbs station.



My brother and I loved them. My favorite was the "Six Dancing Princesses" (I think because they had pretty dresses). But we all loved "The Princess Who Never Laughed" and "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers" We still quote them to this day.

("e=mc not squared" So. Funny.)

Anyway... I think Faerie Tale Theatre + Disney started my love for fairy tales.

In high school I loved going to the library and checking out books from the J398's I loved reading the fairy tales and looking at the beautiful illustrations.

Three of my favorite fairy tale illustrators happen to be: P.J. Lynch, Trina Hyman, and Lisbeth Zwerger (I think I've mentioned this before but it never hurts to do so again. :)


My art is heavily influenced by them.

Now when I need info about fairy tales I always go to surlalunefairytales.com. It has so much fairy tale info I don't think I'll ever get sick of it. Here is the annotated Little Mermaid. On the site you can find not only text of the tale but illustrations, histories, similar tales across cultures and current retellings of the tales. It's so fabulous.

And just in case you were wondering, my current favorite is The Three Spinners , a tale similar to Rumpelstiltskin. 

What are some of your fairy tale memories. When was the first time you ever remember hearing a classic fairy tale?

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