2016 SCBWI-LA, Part 2: Illustration Intensive Brilliance

I am a big Illustration Intensive fan. Creative people, in this industry, have to be life-long learners. Sophie Blackall, this past weekend, talked about herself improving as an artist and compared it to yoga. Even when you are improving, you can always stretch deeper, reach farther... I love that analogy!

I was particularly excited for this intensive because I have never done am intensive that focused on character design.  I am sure you are familiar with #WeNeedDiverseBooks. This is something I feel really passionate about. I've moved around a lot, and many of my friends and their kids, that are from a variety of different ethnicities and races, are not usually represented in picture books. So this intensive started off by prompting us to draw someone from a specific race or ethnicity, from our imagination, and afterwards by reference. After using my imagination (which was occasionally reliable for this sort of thing), it was incredible to see reference of a broader spectrum and larger variety of people belonging to a certain race or ethnicity.

Next we analyzed facial expressions and were prompted to illustrate that emotion on an animal or object. This was all very fast paced... you had to be on your toes in this intensive! One of the prompts that I had a hard time wrapping my brain around was an angry barn. I wish you could have seen the other illustrators designs. There was so much talent in that room. Here is my very disgruntled owl for you. :)

Art director Laurent Linn, who worked in Sesame Street for many years, brought some puppeteers to act out some seenes for us. Something interesting I found out was that a majority of the puppets in Sesame Street are not built with a smile. So when you think you are seeing a smile, or a warm expression, or conversely an angry expression... it is ALL body gestures. 

Later on, we watched some live actors act out scenes or emotions. They emphasized that the less cliche their actions were, the more sincere and impactful the moment could be.

It really was a brilliant intensive. Before we came to the intensive, we were all asked to bring studies of 3 original animal or human characters. Here are mine:

We analyzed what was working and what was not working. Afterwards, we had some time to synthesize what we had learned and to sketch our characters. I think I want to develop a story out of this little witch. 

Anyway, it really was peachy. Next time I create a character, I will have a lot more to think about. Alrighty, back to work. Good luck to you and me on our projects!

Book Look: Matilda by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake (Happy 25 Years!)

Roald Dahl is my favorite author. Period. (Sorry Shakespeare.) I have a very clear memory of when I discovered him. When I was a whole lot shorter than I am now I lived in a cow town up in Washington state. My friends all lived at least an hour away, so I spent a lot of my time with my two imaginary friends (we were triplets) climbing trees, making Halloween decorations, drawing, and of course reading. Reading was my absolute favorite pastime. My dad went away for a business trip to England and brought me back two books. Matilda (which was recently released at the time), and The Witches. I totally devoured these books. They were dark, they had the best (and the scariest) villains, they were absolutely absurd, and they were totally empowering.

I was particularly fond of Matilda, which has been published for 25 years this year if you can believe it! As a young and nerdy reader I could identify with Matilda reading hours in the library. I thought she was lovely because despite all the horrible and truly sad things that happened to this poor girl, she used her cleverness to pull off some truly wicked tricks (like lining her dad's hat with superglue) to get even with those who bullied her. 

I went on to read all of Roald Dahl's children's books and many of his short stories for adults. I cherish his middlegrade novels best of all. No one will top the level of absurdity, the truly dark and sinister characters he wrote about, and the phenomenal ways the child protagonist conquers all.

I'm grateful that Roald Dahl wrote such brilliant stories. 

Almost grateful enough to do this:But not quite.

Anyhow, after getting all blubbery about the best book in the whole wide world (to me that is.) My question to you is, what was your favorite book when you were a kid? Is it still a favorite? Do you remember when you first read it? 

And indulge me if you remember when you read Matilda for the first time. And then you will officially be one of my besties.