Sunday Illustrator Sessions and Illustrated Notes From #SCBWIWinter22

Today's Illustrator sessions focused on SETTING, how to build a believable world that amplifies the story arc and reflects your characters' physical and emotional journey. After an intro from Sarah Baker, Laurent Linn, and Cecilia Yung, we heard from illustrators Juana Martinez-Neal, Victoria Tentler-Krylov and Victo Ngai.  Thanks to ASL interpreters Jodi Raffoul, Jennye Kamin and Emma for their help with this session.

With Juana Martinez-Neal, we explored historical and cultural settings.

With Victoria Tentler-Krylov, we explored urban and architectural settings.

With Victo Ngai, we explored imaginative and enhanced settings.

After we heard from these three amazing illustrators, there was a lively Q&A panel with Juana, Victoria and Victo, moderated by Pat Cummings.

Thanks to artist attendees who have been posting some of their illustrated session notes with the conference hashtag #SCBWIWinter22! You can see a selection of illustrated notes from Friday and Saturday in this blog post. Here is a selection from sessions today:

And one more #SCBWIBird, from Haley Grunloh. The hashtag is being used by first-timers at the conference; see Jolie Stekly's excellent Newcomers' Orientation for details.

Author Panel: The Birth of a Picture Book: Juana Martinez-Neal

Juana Martinez-Neal is the recipient of the 2018 Pura Belpré Medal for Illustration for La Princesa and the Pea and the Caldecott Honor for Alma and How She Got Her Name, among others.

"A line is dot that went for a walk" - Paul Klee

This is how Juana's sees her process. Or more like a squiggly line with lots of starts and stops. She says no one wants to follow it because it's chaos.

By the time ALMA was published it had been 8 years since she had the idea. The essence remained the same, inspired by her own name. "How your name changes you and makes you who you are stayed with me."

Juana started with character sketches, these changed many times over the years. Until one day she drew "this" while working on something else.

"Fear is my best friend in my creative process. There's fear and the only thing you can do is act. Only with action you can face your fear. You keep working and working and working."

A quote from Juana's good friend Molly Idle

"All you can control is the action."