Portrait

Pin It Now! So I teach a figure drawing class at Orange County High School of the Arts and often we use students as models. This is a drawing I did during class of a student of mine from one of my other classes. She was a great model! I LOVE getting a chance myself to draw during figure class. Sometimes it's hard to wrest myself away when I'm really enjoying a drawing I'm working on :). This drawing was done with black and white charcoal.

Scratchboard

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I had never done scratchboard before, but last semester my director suggested we do some in one of the art classes I teach. Scratchboard is really cool! This is one I did recently. I like how the hatching gives it kind of an 19th century engraving look.

Teaching is good for keeping you on your toes and trying new things:)

Imagination

Pin It Now! Did this other spot illustration drawing recently and enjoyed how it came out. Right now I've been working on a digital painting of a dragon. Sigh. Me and my dragons:) It's in the ugly middle stage right now, but I think it'll work out.

it's a faun... and a couple of fairies

Pin It Now! So here's one of the sketches I did a little while ago to build my portfolio of black & white line art/spot illustrations. Any excuse to draw gnarled trees:)

some new stuff

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Well, another long silence, but I've been working on some new stuff that I'm very excited about. I finished work on the assignment I was doing for a small publishing company and I'm very happy with how it turned out. And they like it too--even better! The project was a version of Jason & the Golden Fleece from Greek mythology. I did a series of 8 black & white drawings for the story. I'm also supposed to be doing a color cover for it, but right now that's on hold (they have a blk&wht cover made up for now from one of the drawings). Above you'll see one of the drawings. It was fun and I'm hopeful that it will lead to more work both with this company and beyond that to others.

Cara :)

holiday business and good times

Pin It Now! Argh, it's been far too long since I put up a new blog post. Since my last post--which was after the summer SCBWI conference in LA, I've had a few things going. First, I've been working on some line drawing art. I'm trying to get a black & white line drawing portfolio going. I've had it in the back of my mind for a long time, but I'm taking some action on that. I'll try to put up something soon. Secondly, I've been producing some beginning stage work for a small publishing project that came out of the summer conference--Woo Hoo! I don't want to say too much about it since it's still in early stages but I'm very excited about it. It has to do with mythology which I love!

Besides that, I'm teaching my usual art classes at OC High School of the Arts. It's great and I feel privileged to be there, but I was really ready for the holiday break. I had a very nice Christmas--stayed here instead of flying back to see family in NY--and had a good time with friends here. I'm planning on visiting NY in the summer instead since that is the time of year I love the most back east.

Hope everyone has a great New Year's!

back to reality, and on to new heights

Pin It Now! Well, I'm back now from the SCBWI Summer Conference... it ended yesterday. I thought I would write some of the thoughts and information I took away from it.

First of all, it was a really fun experience. There's nothing like being surrounded with about 1,000 people who are excited about the same thing you are--creating words and art for children & young adults. It makes you feel so empowered, like you have all these people behind you. You're not alone in what you're trying to do. And the speakers are one inspiration after another. A good place to see some photos and commentary of the conference can be found at the summer conference blog here.

Here's some of what I listened to:

-Stephen Malk (agent) talk on "How To Build Your Illustration Career", which included practical advice like subscribing to the Horn Book Magazine on publishing, finding a career model to look at, different ways of getting my work out there using the web, etc.

-Editors Panel that talked about the changing market and current success stories

-Elizabeth Parisi (Exec. Art Director for Scholastic) talk on Book Covers, which talked about how book covers have become more simple and iconic. Also talked about how most middle grade covers are illustrated, but Young Adult tend to be photo.

-Karen Cushman (author) talk about her way of creating. Some good advice like instead of the old "write what you know", write what you wonder about.

-Krista Marino & Anica Rissi (editors) talk about what's successful in the teen market right now and how the business has changed in the teen realm.

-Holly Black (author, Spiderwick Chronicles) talk about creating good stories

-Alice Pope (editor) talk about practical online promotion: blogging, Facebook, etc.

-Richard Peck (author) talk about why we do what we do.

-Marla Frazee (illustrator,author) talk about creating pictures from an author's words.

-Susan Sherman (art director) talk about looking at great master's art of the past to inform our present work.

-Karen Cushman (author) talk about researching for historical stories.

-Kathleen Duey (author) talk about how to use what we've learned at the Conference after we leave.

As you can see, quite a lot on information. I also participated in the Portfolio Showcase. It was a great opportunity to get my work seen by lots of people, including editors and art directors. I hope to see some good things come out of it and I had a couple of good conversations with people about my art.

I also had a really good time over the whole conference in being there with some of the members of my monthly illustrators' group, OC Illustrators. In fact, our little group is gaining more recognition. Last year's winner of Best Portfolio in the showcase was one of our members, Pat Cantor! Well, this year's winner was our very own Israel Sanchez! Israel and I were both at CSUF together and his work is so good though very different from mine. Congratulations, Israel!! He will be flown out as Pat was to NY to meet with art directors and I expect big things to come of it. I'm definitely in the right illustration critique group!

Well, that's the wrap up. Time for me to try to process some of what I learned and get some stuff done.