My Experience at the Monday Intensive for Illustrators

L-R Kadir, hidden David, Paul, Richard, Marla and Jerry. Denise was looking for her acorn. The black and blue goody bags are not full of booze, I asked.

It's not hyperbole, Monday was the best day of my illustrating life. I didn't spend four years, or even one, in a traditional art school, so I don't know if this is standard procedure, but Monday was unlike anything I've every experienced.

The seven artists tapped to do this first-ever live demo format, I am beyond thankful they so freely shared their talents and thoughts with us. I am bowing down to our SCBWI Illustrator Committee and SCBWI headquarters for making this happen. Compared to other conferences and conventions, SCBWI internationals are cheap. And I happily admit I'd pay a bazillion more dollars to see another live demo day. Don't hesitate to fork over big bills to attend the next live-demo illustrator intensive. And if any of these people are teaching a class near you, be sure you sign up.

Other attendees are going to blog the crap out of today, I'm sure, but I can't do it justice. My brief notes are below:

Each artist answered technical and philosophical questions while they worked for about an hour on an art piece.

Paul showed us how he does a monochromatic/grisaille underpainting in watercolor before adding oil glazes on top.

Marla showed us how she gets her amazing dark lines, she also started one of her fifty color washes, and talked to us about problem solving in final art.

Richard made a mess. But then he made a beautiful painting out of it full of energy and color and a bit of egg tempera.

Kadir did a portrait of Dan Santat while we got up in his business. Lots of talk about the importance of making personal art and loving life.

Denise forgot her acorn. This is not a euphemism. She painted with paper pulp and did a teensy bit of swearing, but we were all completely mesmerized by her process and loved her and her final piece.

David sketched art director/Penguin Putnam VP Cecilia Yung before doing a sketch of himself and showing us how he retains life in his lines when moving from the exuberant pencil sketch to the finished ink drawing.

And Jerry sketched and painted me! No. It was a wild bird. Wait, that could still be me... Anyway.

He showed us how he uses photo reference to make his amazing animals and we watched his light watercolors build up to brilliant gorgeousness.

Jerry's painting in progress. I thought it was me he was painting— that bird and I use the same eyeshadow.

 The day ended with a brief group Q&A. It was a bonhomie love fest.

One way we can say thank you to the seven artists who gave so much to us is to go out and buy a buttload of their books.

Paul's books on Indiebound

Richard's books on Indiebound

Marla's books on Indiebound

Jerry's books on Indiebound

Denise's books on Indiebound

Kadir's books on Indiebound

David's books on Indiebound

THANKS FOR THE BEST SUMMER CONFERENCE EVER!

Denise Fleming: Illustrating for the Very, Very Young

If picture book making was competitive French pastry baking, Denise Fleming would be wearing the blue, red, and white collar of the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France. But she's equally happy to wear a croissant-shaped hat* instead, because that's what would most appeal to her target audience, the very, very little kids that are moving from board books to picture books.

When illustrating for the very, very young some key ingredients are:

• Strong graphics. Simple, bold bright, but not entirely lacking in the subversive or a bit of detail: give kids something a little extra, things hiding in the picture or in the background, like a pile of croissants.
• Make the actions kid friendly. If you look at Denise's ALPHABET UNDER CONSTRUCTION, her original sketches were quite different—there were big, heavy adult actions and jobs—welding, carving giant cement blocks. But in the final, all of the materials and actions can be found in daycares and done by little kids: painting, knotting yarn, eating baked goods, gluing stuff...

NOT ENTIRELY RELATED WORDS TO LIVE BY FROM DENISE FLEMING:

You can never use too much glue.

Denise blows raspberries at the teacher rhyme, "Just a dot, not a lot."

• Clean fonts. Make sure it's easy for little kids to distinguish not only different letters but different cases in your type by choosing the right font and not doing anything to wild, like make the text read croissants, not cRoissAnTs.

There's more ingredients than that, but how are those for a taste? Light and flaky, yet disarmingly moist, am I right? For a bit more about Denise plus a slideshow of her books, you can visit this post. She's on Twitter! @DeniseKFleming. We need to bombard her with Twitterlove and get her tweeting more regularly.**

*I'm correct in assuming no child has ever refused a croissant, oui?
**I won't write more anymore about irregularity.***
***Or croissants. It must be time for a snack.