Sleepless in Nashville.

So here are my intensive pieces for this weekend's SCBWI Midsouth conference and I am so very tired.

And let me just state while yawning and droopy eyed that SCBWI conferences are AMAZING, no matter what level of freelancer you are whether you are a novice or moderate superstar (With the exceptions of true Children's Book super stars like Chris Van Allsburg, Mo Williams, or JK Rowling. I'm assuming these types of conferences would be less useful to those of you who are so talented that everything they write and/or illustrate turns into gold.) 

Anyway, I am excited to hang out with my eccentric, talented, and a wee bit crazy kidlit friends on Friday.  Looking forward to being inspired, course corrected, and hopefully I can get over my social anxiety to make some good connections.  

Tiger hidden in my soup. (Should have added more cumin.) Or how sleep is optional before a SCBWI conference.

So I am totally delighted to say that I get to attend the Midsouth's SCBWI conference in 9 days. I am not delighted to say that I am bone tired. But it seems to me that this is how things are suppose to go before a conference. As my sweet husband will attest, I get a wee bit cranky running on 5 hours of sleep. ;)                                                                                                                                                    

So the SCBWI has started to do intensives in the last few years. I LOVE intensives. It's like being back in art school again. Basically you get an assignment from a super amazing Art Director. This year we are privileged enough to work with Ms. Loraine Joyner from Peachtree Publishers. My assignment was to illustrate a spread of the story Tiger in My Soup written by Kashmira Seth and illustrated by Jeffrey Ebbler. (We were encouraged not to look at the book, so I have no idea what it the story looks like other than the cover.)

Anyway, you submit your concept art, thumbnails and a final sketch to the Art Director and they give you constructive notes on how to fix or better enhance your illustration, then you come to the intensive with your final illustration.

This was my initial complete sketch of the spread:

Ms. Joyner went above and beyond the call of duty and sent me three pages of incredibly helpful and super encouraging notes. She helped me see where I needed pump up the action or fix things here and there. She basically liked the left side of the spread, so here is a simple upgraded version of the right side of the spread:



I'm working on the painting process right now and I have basically one week to finish. Excited for next weekend. Hopefully I can have enough time to be as meticulous as I want to be. Wish me luck, will you? :)