The month is almost at an end, which means August and the annual SCBWI summer conference are just around the corner. Here's a look at what's been happening so far this month:
July started off on a slightly sour note. At the end of June, I finally received word from Andrea Davis Pinkney at Scholastic that she was passing on my picture book submission. I had been waiting for several months with no word from her whatsoever, so in a way it was a relief to know something, even if that something wasn't the best news. On the bright side, she sent me a very warm, personalized rejection letter and encouraged me to submit my "promising" book to other publishers.
I'm taking her advice to heart, but I'm not going to approach publishers directly this time. Instead, I'm going to submit to agents. I've started a bookmark folder on my computer for agent websites, and I've been compiling research while polishing my portfolio. I have one piece to finish and two to slightly rework before I start knocking on agent doors.
In other news, I've been at work on a new picture book dummy, tentatively titled "Horace and Amelia." It's about an odd-couple pair of primates, a gorilla and a monkey, and their (mis)adventures at the symphony. It's fun to be drawing animal characters after so much concentration on human beans.
Here are some of the many gorilla sketches I produced as I tried to find the right look for Horace. The big one in the bottom right corner is the one I felt was spot-on.
On the business side of my life, I signed up with Portfolios.com recently, though I've yet to be approached by anyone about actual work. Meanwhile, I am still waiting to be paid for my t-shirt design for Big Buck Hunter Pro. Way back in March, I had submitted a design to Threadless for their "Big Buck Loves Threadless" contest. I have never even seen a Big Buck Hunter Pro game, let alone played one. However, I'm an off-again/on-again Threadless addict, so I couldn't stop myself once I got an idea for a shirt. My submission didn't win, but about a month later a guy left a post on my Threadless blog saying he wanted to speak to me about having my design printed for promotional use. I negotiated via email and sent him the design without a formal contract (but with terms documented in emails, at least). I still haven't been paid. I only sent the guy an invoice about 10 days ago, though, so I'm not too worried. Yet. It was a new challenge to find out how to write up an invoice, organize a job log, etc. I found Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers to be a big help. It comes with customizable forms of all sorts on CD and informative explanations of each in the book.
I'm wrapping up July by participating in a small group show of children's illustration at the Chemers Gallery in Tustin, CA. I meet monthly with a group of children's illustrators, (a "schmooze" group, as we're called), and every year for the past 3 or 4 years they've had an exhibit of members' work. This year is the first year the exhibit is being held in an actual gallery, and it happens to be a gallery that specializes in legit children's illustration from published books!
We were each randomly assigned single lines of text from published children's books, but we weren't told the title of the book, the author, etc. We had to blindly illustrate and conjure up our own visual story. My lines were "I got up this morning and meant to be good, but things didn't happen the way that they should"; and "One morning, while I was sitting beside him on the veranda, I noticed the tendril of a creeping vine trailing across the steps."
I thought the lines suggested a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk-type story. I tried to imply a new twist by making the main character a girl and by hinting that Jack himself is in the business of selling magic beans to a new generation of unsuspecting kids....
That's all for now. I can't believe July is almost gone! Here's a look ahead to August: I will report on the SCBWI conference, of course, where I will have a personalized critique of my latest picture book text, "Horace and Amelia." I'm aiming to have a rough sketch dummy finished by conference time so that I can get feedback on that, too. I will report on the agent search and will have updated my website. And I hope to have made headway in looking for ways for license some of my art. I went to a one-day conference a couple of months ago where a licensing agent gave a presentation, and it got my wheels turning...until then, happy trails!
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