Children's Book Conference

 This past year I worked really hard to have a solid portfolio so I can start looking for an agent and start working in the publishing world as my kids get more independent. One of the best ways to break into the industry and meet people is to go to SCWBI conferences. I went to one four years ago and I got a lot of feed back, took all the advice, took some more art classes, said no to most of my social life and worked between motherhood this past year, that when I won best portfolio at the conference it was so rewarding, to feel appreciated and to be recognized for my hard work. This time my feedback was that I was totally ready to be in the publishing world and I will have no problem to find an agent (I just need to knock on their doors) and now that I know all the art rules so well, now I should try to break them and just play and she what I can create.

Anyway it was so good and I'm ready to take on the art world! Next year my plan is to look really hard fro an agent and hopefully get an agent and start working full time as an illustrator. Wish me luck!

Snap Shots

The first year babies change so much I feel like I have to take many pictures to capture every moment. It's been fun to see Elizabeth's little personality come through.

Dustin took the kids to a movie the other day.

Dustin standing by his logo design.

Being an Artist is Hard, Being a Mother is Hard

(This is a post I started last week but never really finished so I'm posting now)

This week I was really bad at taking pictures of the boys and our daily lives, so I thought maybe this would be a great opportunity to flush out some thoughts I have in my head lately, so this posts in mainly for me and probably will be random.

I don't know where I want to begin with this post...

Being an artist is hard, it's emotionally draining sometimes. Being a mother can be hard, and emotionally draining as well, so when you combine the two, well, it's emotionally draining.

I love art, it's such a big part of my life, and I honestly feel like it's my calling in life.

Speaking of calling in life.... This year I really have felt like I need to push my art, which has been a scary and frustrating thing. It's scary to put yourself out there and get rejected or have the fear of getting rejected. I don't think people know how much soul one puts in their artwork and it's hard when people don't appreciate it.  It's frustrating when I plan to paint that night and I end up having to take care of sick children. But I try to put all the negative thoughts my head and keep going.

This past Saturday our Stake had a Relief Society conference. And the theme was "women who know" and women who create. And they wanted sisters to bring something to display what they like to  "create" so I brought over some framed prints.
In the conference they talked about all the women in the scriptures. Then afterwards they had some workshops and one of the workshops the speaker did a wonderful presentation about the Female Mormon artist Minerva Teichert. I'm pretty sure I was teary-eyed most of the presentation because I felt like I could really relate to the artist. She gave up a lot art opportunities to be a mother and for her children, and that she would paint between chores and late at night when the kids were in bed. She was rejected a lot in her career but at the same time had a lot of success. She painted huge murals in her living room, it made me feel better about my studio in the corner of our bedroom:

And it was something I need to hear and I'm so grateful that I went. Anyway, I have more thoughts, but one is busy. Anyway here is some homework that I have been working on this past week. It's been hard but I'm learning loads.

Also this past week I helped a friend with a photo shoot for a bunch etsy shops to show their produts. I said I would only do it if I can put one of my prints in the shoot ;) anyway it was a lot of fun, since I love staging things and taking pictures of it.

Behind the Scenes

I thought it would be fun to show a little bit about my process when I work on an art piece for those who might think it's interesting. I don't know about you, but I love behind the scenes and learning how things happen. I love watching special features on a movie, and my favorite part when I went to see a David Letterman show in NYC was not the actual show, but watching what went on behind the camera and between the commercials. 

I also wanted to show the process because I think a lot of people think artists just come up with everything in their heads and they can draw anything just like that, when usually it's the opposite. Yes, there are times I can draw something right out of my head but usually I have reference. I wished I had known this information at a younger age as an artist, I always wanted to draw stylized or "Disney-like" or "cartoon" but I never could make up stuff in my head so I thought I was just a realistic artist because I only could draw what I saw, little did I know I was like any other artist. 

Anyway, here is my process:

I was asked to illustrate a Peter Pan poster for a children's theater in Arizona and that it was to be a  10 foot painting and that they wanted a lot of the characters in the poster and that they didn't want the Disney version.

 First thing I do, I usually start sketching and flushing out ideas or look for reference, in this particular case I decided to look at reference, So I started pinning like crazy:

Then I started sketching, I did probably 10 thirty second to minute sketches, and asked Dustin his top three. After we discussed we picked the top three, after that, I cleaned them up a bit so they are little more readable then I send the sketches to my client and have them pick what they like, so here were the three samples I sent them:

 So a little trick us artist's do, if there is one sketch we like better than the others we usually work on that one just a little more because that usually persuades the client to pick that one because it looks just a little bit better!

After they pick a sketch I look at more reference and start cleaning up the drawing. A lot of the time artists ask people if they would model for them, but usually I just do it myself. Not the most flattering picture but it was late and I hurried and put my hair up so I could see my ears and neck:

So I take pictures for posing then I use pictures for reference to help create my characters:

For hook, I used a lot of Dustin Hoffman, and some famous baseball player that had the perfect mustache. 

Then I found this painting and fell in love with it, and it became my inspiration for Wendy:

Then I used Thomas and Oliver for John and Michael ( I like to tie my kids in my paintings sometimes). Then Shmee, I don't know how to spell his name, I mostly made him up with some inspiration. The crocodile is drawn by Dustin and I actually, so that one was a combined effort.

After I flush out the drawing I send it to my clients to get an ok before I start painting:

At this stage there is usually changes but this time they said it was perfect and to carry on. 

I'm not the best painter, I feel like drawing is what I'm pretty good at and that painting has always been my weakness, so a lot of the time I get reference for my painting as well. I try to find an awesome painting that inspires me. So The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe painting I used for color reference along with the 2nd painting, that also inspired my flowers. Then I used a Norman Rockwell painting because he is awesome at painting faces, so I was looking at these 3 paintings the whole time I was painting along with my other references:

Then after many hours of painting and watching movies, all that work turns into this:

Then I send it to my clients. I love when I do more than my client's expectations, I usually try to do more than what they ask because I want them to be happy and have them love my work so much they will use me again.  

This client has been one of my favorite clients I have worked with, I feel like we have a good relationship, they always have fun projects for me and they usually let me do whatever I want to do. This is my 4th painting I have done for them and I hope to do more!

Final Art Homework

A couple weeks ago I finished with my gesture drawing class, and already miss it. It was such a great class! It also got me drawing a lot more, so I hope I keep it up.

Anyway, our last assignment was to come up with a character and look at the model for three minutes and come up with little "stories" using our character/story, and we did 2 sessions of this so that's why I have two stories going on. We could make up a character but I decided to do Peter Pan and Hermione from Harry Potter, because I love both of those stories and they were the ones that popped in my head when I started drawing the model. Again, these aren't finished, perfect drawings, they are exercises but it was a lot of fun. O, also we were allowed to change the pose  a little bit to tell a better story, so our main goal was for the audience to know what's going on first glance, so here was my final assignment:

Art Homework

So here is some of my art homework from my online class, and I mean some... because I have a lot of drawings from this class; it's been so great drawing this much again, it's been very therapeutic for me while kicking my little behind at the same time. I wanted to show some of the homework because when I have mentioned to people I'm taking a class online they think it's an easy class with not that much work and I can do it my own time line, but it's far from that, I have hard assignments, I have dead lines, I have hour long lectures, I get video critiques, I research a lot, and I draw from life while wrestling with two kids. I have to rethink how I see the body while I work on my assignments that I have to turn off my music or movies to fully concentrate, when I usually watch a movie or two while working on art commissions, so it's been taking a lot of concentration and my drawings don't even look half as awesome as my teacher... somewhat frustrating, that's why he works at pixar and I don't ha ha. 

Anyway, so here are some of my home work this past month. These aren't finish drawings so they don't look so great, they are just exercises to help us push our drawings. This one we had to draw silhouettes of the figure, and we were to focus on visual communication, and if need to change positions of limbs or the whole body itself so you can read the silhouette better and know what's going on. Looking back on some of these assignments I see how bad I was on  some of them.

For this week we had to focus on space, or perspective so things don't look flat on the page, I really didn't execute that very well that week, ha ha now looking back on these, but for half of the assignment we had to draw with our subordinate hand, so that explains the squiggly lines. This first page was from life with my left hand.

This week was exaggeration, I'm getting better but I still play it "safe" with my drawings. One day I will get it....

Also that week we had to pick an animal to start studying so we knew the anatomy so well that we could short hand it, in other words know it so well that we could draw it in any position or angle and know it as well as the human body. So here are some of my deer studies.

This last assignment we had to look at the life model video and draw the model as the animal we were studying. And it couldn't look like a human pose, but how the animal would naturally would pose, if that makes sense... so no Mickey Mouse, where it's a mouse carrying a brief case like a human, but like Ratatouille where they move like a rat.

Anyway, super hard, I don't think I concentrated so hard on an assignment before. So the teacher basically did some elephant sketches while he watched the model than after 20 minutes he said it was our turn, ha ha I was pretty pathetic in 20 minutes I had 2 drawings and they didn't look like deer they looked look like a person in a deer costume, I just about died. I wondered what I was going to do since the homework was due in a few days, we had no internet for a week, so I didn't have a week and half like most assignments, so this last week I have been up very late, drawing, drawing, drawing, failing, drawing, drawing, failing again, watched some Bambi for inspiration, and finally things started clicking and finally my drawings started to look like deer. They are far from perfect but I'm proud of my deer drawings because earlier this week I couldn't do this, some of them still look too human but o well I'm still learning. 

That's what I love about art, it's such a humbling and spiritual experience. There have been so many times in college where we would have an assignment and I wouldn't know how I was going to do it, it seemed impossible but by the end of the week I produce the thing I thought I couldn't do. With hard work and prayer all things are possible. Many times I have prayed for help in my art, this week I did, and the Lord blessed me, I still had to work hard, I drew late hours of the night but I did it! So yes, I'm proud of these deers, but we will see if I will still be proud of them after my critique from my teacher.

Also this week, Thomas has been drawing as well. He blows my mind how awesome he is, this is a self portrait he did the other day, and the Harry Potter one I showed on Facebook already but he did another one, the face was way better but this one had the full body, anyway I'm curious to see if he will keep it up.

Anyway, probably boring post to most of you, so if you read all of it awesome!

Figure Drawing Homework

I mentioned before that I was taking an art class, so I thought I would show you some of my homework for those who are interest, so probably no one ha ha. 

Anyway, the class has been awesome! It has attacked some of my weak points in my drawing. And there have been times I got frustrated and had to work my brain a little because this class is teaching me how to see the human body in a different way than I am used to. It's not about the anatomy and trying to represent it exactly, it's more about the mood, feeling, and the story and how to push the pose to communicate those things. 

I would say figure and head drawing is one of my strengths, many of my college professors told me that, but I feel like this class is pushing me to whole different level and I'm excited! This is one of the reasons I love art, you are always improving!

Anyway, here are some samples of my homework, this about a fourth of how many drawings I have done the last 2 weeks but this will give you an idea what the class is like. 

So every week a new lesson comes on the website and I watch about an hour lecture and watch the teacher draw from a "life model". Than so far our assignments have been 30 second poses for 20 minutes from a "life model" than 2 hour life drawings, where I have to go somewhere and basically people watch and draw them. Than we have to look at pictures or paintings and draw the poses. After that we turn it in, than my teacher sends me a video of his critique on my artwork and he draws over my stuff and shows me how I can do better! How awesome is that? So I have one-on-one lesson with a Pixar guy teaching me what they teach the workers there! It's FANTASTIC!

So this first picture is first week where we could only use line to show the movement or gesture, I didn't put too many up from the first lesson on here because it was a bunch of lines, so sorta boring to look at.

The Second week was shape, where we had to draw the shape and than draw over it. It was to help us simplify and to push it more. This week I was struggling at first, it probably sounds crazy but drawing simple shapes and pushing it was hard at first but I felt like I was starting to get it, that I re-drew some of the poses again to see if I could push it even more. 

Here are some life sketches I did when we were in SeaWorld the other day, since people move a lot most of these are ten seconds or less.

Some shape exercises using Norman Rockwell paintings as reference.

It's been fun having homework and learning once again. And I've forgotten how much I love to draw, especially the human body.