I don’t have a lot of time to paint these days, so I’ve started to paint smaller (a whole lot smaller – 2″ x 2″). It’s been fun to create tiny paintings, which surprises me, because I love to painting large. My first tiny painting was an elephant.
Here’s my latest mini painting:
Tiny Bunnies
If you don’t have a lot of time to paint, consider shrinking your canvas or paper!
Do you have any tips on how to fit in art for fun when you don’t have a lot of time?
I’ve wanted to break out my acrylic paints for a while, but I just haven’t had the time. Once I get started on a painting, I want to continue with it until I’m finished. Today I found a solution. Instead of painting as big as I did in college (48″ x 24″ or larger) or as big as I usually do now (around 8″ x 10″), I decided to go smaller. A LOT smaller. Here is my tiny painting for today (2″ x 2″).
a tiny painting of a very large elephant
So, next time you want to paint but don’t have the time, think small!
How do you squeeze in creativity when you don’t have enough time to make art?
I attended three illustration workshops in January and February. The talks were given by Steve Metzler (Dutton), Patrick Collins (Henry Holt), and Regina Griffith (Egmont). Here are some notes from those sessions that I thought might help both illustrators and writers.
Steve Metzler gave a talk about Dutton, then reviewed several portfolios, including mine. I learned almost as much from what he said about other portfolios as I did from what he said about mine. If you have a chance to have him review your portfolio, take it.
- Characters are selling in picture books and graphic novels, especially quirky characters (like Fancy Nancy, Skippy Jon Jones, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Baby Mouse).
- A good character leads to a good story.
- He likes to see people in portfolios, not just animals.
- 2012 is supposed to be the height of the new PB market (baby boom in 2006).
- If you’re an illustrator, also be a writer.
- He works on everything from PB to YA.
- Sees a need for graphic novels for boys (7-9 year olds).
- Don’t ever do a PB dummy where it’s all the same (all full page spreads, all vignettes, all single pages, etc.)
Patrick Collins gave portfolio reviews to three lucky people, followed by Q&A at a local SCBWI meeting. He didn’t review my portfolio, but I learned a lot from the portfolios he did review.
- A publisher might choose your art or your writing, but not always both – even if you do both.
- Try to have a focus in each image. How do you get the focal point of the image to come forward and have everything else fade into the background? Try varying the tones/values.
- Kid’s books are all about characters and storytelling.
- Pay attention to how you draw people and animals and how you incorporate them into your backgrounds.
- You really need to put in the time to make progress if you want to have a career in art.
- Make sure you have character in your characters. They should look like living people, not mannequins. (You can achieve this through expressions, body language and interaction between characters.)
- Need to have more than one perspective/point of view.
- Think about how you can show focus in a busy image. You don’t want people to miss the important part of the scene.
- The reason an art director looks for a consistent style is so they know what you can/will do if they hire you. You can always market a different style later. Show your best style at the time.
Regina Griffith gave a talk about Egmont, then reviewed several portfolios, including mine. As with Steve Metzler’s talk, I learned almost as much from what she said about other portfolios as I did from what she said about mine. Regina was really great about reviewing a portfolio and then talking about what was working or not with the whole group. If you have a chance to have her review your portfolio, take it.
- Not publishing many PBs right now. Focusing on older books.
- She’s looking for a broad range with real kid appeal.
- Most of the books on their list right now are US books, but they do have a couple that are foreign books.
- No graphic novels yet, but maybe in the future.
- Can’t imagine not liking animals in clothing. It depends on the text though. (In response to a question about anthropomorphized animals.)
- Picture books should have a plot.
- In a crowd scene, everyone should have different personalities.
- Page turn surprises in picture books are a good thing.
- It’s good to show you can fill a page with spots/vignettes or with full page spreads.
- It’s good to have black and white images in your portfolio when picture books are in a slump.
March Madness has started, and this time it’s about writing, not basketball! Denise Jaden started a writing challenge for the month of March. It’s a good way to reach your goals for the month and there will be prizes!
My goals are:
1. Write at least 25k on my zombie WIP (and finish it if possible, though that’s not an official goal).
2. Remember to check in for March Madness at least 3x a week (daily if I can manage it).
There are check-in stations at the following blogs for each week day through the month of March:
Mondays – http://denisejaden.livejournal.com
Tuesdays – http://shanasilver.livejournal.com
Wednesdays – http://jenhayley.com/blog/
Thursdays – http://www.denisejaden.com/Blog.html
Fridays - http://shanasilver.livejournal.com
Saturdays – http://ellestraussbooks.blogspot.com
Sundays – http://jenhayley.com/blog/
For more info on prizes and how to participate, hop on over to this post on Denise Jaden’s blog. It’s not too late to join in!
What are your goals?
Update: I’m working on a new digital paint style, trying different things to see what looks best. The top image is new, slightly altered from the first one (which is below it). Basically I’ve made it a bit more painterly and gotten rid of the black line. The third image is them together, side by side. Which one do you like better? (I’ve done this style before and showed it on my blog here.)
Sometimes when I watch the Olympics, I wonder about things, like do elephants have their own Olympic games? And if they do, would they have the same events as our Olympics? Here’s the first event that I imagined from their winter games – Elephant Figure Skating:
Olympic Elephant Skater (take 2)
Figure Skating at the Elephant Olympics
2 Elephant Skaters Side By Side
What do you think about when you watch the Olympics?
I’m thinking of drawing the Elephant Olympians in the curling event next. It cracks me up every time I imagine it. Plus, I need to work more on this new style; I haven’t mastered it yet.
p.s. Don’t worry, I’m not getting rid of my more graphic style, just trying something new.
I’ve read a lot of books with mean girls in them lately. Even books that aren’t about mean girls seem to have mean girls in them, and popular is often shorthand for mean girl. I have been thinking a lot about this subject as I’m writing my current YA and brainstorming my next one. Here are my (unscientific) thoughts on mean girls and writing:
We’ve all known a mean girl or two.
There are people (usually of an older generation) that claim to not have any experience with mean girls. Good for them. Maybe it’s true, maybe their memory has allowed them to forget, or maybe they were the mean girl. For the rest of us, we know what mean girls are all about. It’s human nature to want to control your world. Mean girls take that to another level.
In books, mean girls are almost always popular and all the girls want to be like them. They usually have money and/or status, are good looking (or have another attribute that makes up for it if they’re not), get all the hot guys, and rule the school. There’s a ring of truth to this, because there are a lot of popular girls that are also mean.
**However, not all popular girls are mean, just as not all mean girls are popular.**
Girls who are popular are usually labeled “mean girls.” Girls who are not popular get names like, “bully,” or “future serial killer.”
These are the mean girls that we’ve all read and heard about, the girls (popular or not) that pick on people for no apparent reason. The ones that make high school a living hell, and probably junior high / middle school as well. These are the girls you want to stay away from, keep off their radar, and hope that they don’t single you out for their brand of fun. They’re also, many times, the girls that other girls aspire to be. I don’t think this is because the other girls want to be that cruel, rather that they want immunity from the kind of torture that’s handed out.
There are other types of mean girls.
The mean girl that doesn’t usually get a label and isn’t recognized that often, is the “not in the popular group” and “not a bully for no reason” kind of mean girl. She’s not signaling out people for random torture, criticizing her friends, or dictating what they should wear. She is not a queen bee or a wanna be. What is she then? She could be one of two main types.
1. She’s a normal girl in a group that tends to have a stronger opinion than the rest of them. There’s usually a leader in any group of girls who are friends, whether popular or not, and even if there are only two or three in the group. One girl is the person that all the others look to for answers, like what to do on a Friday night or how to get the guy you like to notice you. She’s a perfectly nice person, most of the time.
2. She might be just a regular girl, not the group leader and usually nice to everyone. She also can’t handle stress. She can sway the group’s opinion with her emotions when she bombs on a test or her boyfriend breaks up with her. She’s angry and she takes it out on a friend – usually someone that didn’t do anything wrong, or did something by accident, not meaning to hurt her feelings or embarrass her.
Unfortunately, friends often have disagreements. With hormones raging, the stress of homework, finals, college applications, and boys, even the most friendly of girls could be a ticking time bomb.
Girls don’t get over their grudges that easily. Sometimes a girl is cast out and shunned from a group for weeks on end. This is a horrible experience to go through, but if that’s all it is, you will usually live through it, make up with your friends and go on to ignore someone else a few weeks later.
So, as writers, what can we do about mean girls?
We can write stories that shed light on the subject and provide a context for what’s happening (not preaching, not giving lessons, but telling real stories about characters that are the target of mean girls or are mean girls themselves).
We can write books about girls that aren’t in the popular group, but are still mean girls.
We can write books about girls aren’t mean girls or popular girls, but who are mean to each other. These girls exist just as much as the kind that are written about more often.
We can write books from the mean girl’s POV; what makes her tick?
We can write stories where there are no mean girls at all. Everyone needs an escape from real life.
We can recommend books about mean girls; there are a lot of them out there.
Mean Girl Books
Here are four books I recommend. If you read them all back to back, it’s a great way to see how mean girls can be handled in many different ways in children’s and YA books. Plus, they are all excellent books!
Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers – I love this book because it’s from a mean girl’s POV. It’s amazing and cringe-worthy. Here’s how the main character, Regina, describes who she and her friends are, “We’re the kind of popular that parents like to pretend doesn’t exist so they can sleep at night, and we’re the kind of popular that makes our peers unable to sleep at night.”
How to Be Popular by Meg Cabot – this is a great book to read after Courney’s. It’s a look at how one girl was able to take care of the mean girl that was harassing her and find a way to be true to herself at the same time. It’s fun to read such a light-hearted and positive mean girl book.
Going Bovine by Libba Bray – this book is not at all about mean girls and the main character is a boy. However, the mean girls still manage to get into the story. It’s a good way to see how mean girls are a facet of every day life for a lot of high school girls, and for boys too. It’s also a really great trip, has a garden gnome in it, and won the Printz award this year.
Two of a Kind written by Jacqui Robbins / illustrated by Matt Phelan – a picture book about mean girls and friendship. You don’t usually think about mean girls this young. Most books with mean girls are for YA or middle grade readers. It’s great that there’s a picture book that tackles the subject in such a thoughtful way, and the illustrations are spot on for the emotions involved.
What do you think about mean girls?
I’d love to hear what you think about this subject. What mean girl books would you recommend? What do you think we can do about mean girls, if anything? Any other thoughts you’d like to share?
I’m designing my postcards for the SCBWI winter conference next weekend. I had it all planned out when I realized that I wanted a different image on one side. I’ve already done several finishes for the chicken PB, but they were all similar emotion-wise. So I did a new finish from a different page in the dummy. On one side of the postcard will be the new image:
sruble postcard image 1
On the other side is one of the chickens I finished last week:
sruble postcard image 2
I also have new business cards with this image on one side (and a crop of the new image on the other side):
sruble's new business card
It’s always takes longer to design postcards and business cards than I think it will (not to mention that printing and cutting usually takes twice as long as I think it will). That’s why I started early this time, but it’s worth it if they turn out.
Update: all 105 postcards and business cards are printed and cut, and ready for the conference! This is the earliest I’ve ever been done with promo materials before a conference. Now all I have to do is finish all the art and stuff for my portfolio! Whew!
Stephanie Ruble (a.k.a. sruble) is an author and artist. She has been drawing and painting ever since she could hold a crayon and making up stories since she learned to talk.
sruble is currently working on a YA zombie novel and images for her portfolio. For more info, check out her website -
