New Year Reflections on 2016

Well it has been three years since I actively started blogging and as it is January it is a time for reflection upon what I got up to in the last year.  In general I have blogged less this year, probably due to returning to the world of work after an extended maternity leave, but I have still endeavoured to become a picture book Author and Illustrator, which is what my blogging aims to document.

So this year I started my Instagram account after hearing that it is how a lot of illustrators get spotted by agents.  I like it as a platform and it brings my work to a new audience judging from the likes and follows.  I treat it as a sketchbook showcase and show different work from what I show on my Facebook page and Twitter.  I’ve have not been approached by any agents yet though.

Speaking of agents, after going to the brilliant SCBWI Workshop; Getting Your Picture Book onto the Page with Elizabeth O Dulemba, I chatted with Sheila Averbuch about how she found Writer’s Digest Webinars (the live ones with access to editors and agents) very valuable in her path to publishing.  So I decided to try one and bought How to Write a Picture Book That Sells complete with a critique from a US agent .  While I found the webinar itself to be just okay (useful content but delivered by reading from slides) I was more interested in getting a professional critique on my current ‘best’ manuscript.  For the money I paid, I was initially disappointed with the four lines of feedback that I received.  The first two lines were positive and then I read these comments;

“I wish there was more of a story, though.  The picture book market is so competitive 
that I wonder if this story has enough in it to make it stand out from the rest.”

I couldn’t believe it, especially as I had just added more conflict to my latest draft, in truth I felt a bit despondent and stopped writing for a little while.  A few months later there was an opportunity to have a 121 session with Skylark a UK literary agency, organised by SCBWI BI NE.  So I got that manuscript out and read it again, I still thought it was good until I analysed it using Alayne Kay Christian’s Art of Arc self-study exercises .  The agent was right there wasn’t actually any story there at all.  It was a bittersweet moment of realisation that I need to revise that manuscript more before I can send it out for submission again.

So I didn’t submit this Picture Book manuscript to Skylark as it obviously wasn’t ready and because they are mainly Young Adult and Middle Grade agents.  Instead I decided to submit an old comic script that I had recently re-drafted.  And I was very surprised to get great feedback from Joanna Moult. Find out what she said here in Em Lynas’s write up of the event.  So I now feel encouraged to continue working on the both the comic a bit more and the picture book.

This year I have increased my volunteering duties for SCBWI, not only did I hang the SCBWI Illustrator Showcase in Seven Stories again, I am also now co-Network Organiser for the North East alongside Marie-Claire Imam-Guitierrez.  You can read an interview with me about the role in SCBWI's Words and Pictures, online magazine.  So far I have learnt a lot from watching Marie-Claire organise the wonderful Creating Believable Characters Event and I will be organising an Illustration event in the next few months.

The SCBWI BI Illustration Showcase at Seven Stories

My artwork output has diversified this year and now includes Caricatures and Comics!  Both as a result of doing Inkotber. I’ve done three Inktobers now and for Inktober2016 I wanted to do something a bit bigger to grow my audience.  I thought I’d draw and ink a page of my comic manuscript everyday but realised how ambitious that would be in the timescale of a month.  Instead I adapted Kate Bush’s song Under Ice into a 16 page, one panel per page, minicomic.  I am a massive fan of Kate Bush and was lucky enough to go to a concert of hers during her 2014 residency at the Eventim Apollo.  Under Ice is a song from a suite called the Ninth Wave on her 1985 album Hounds of Love.  It is a very visual suite of songs that I interpret as being about a woman falling overboard a ship and slipping in and out of consciousness before she is finally rescued.  Each song is either a dream or an account of what is happening.  As you can see from my  drawings, I imagine the song to be about Kate skating on a frozen river when it cracks and she falls in the water and dies, the ending sequence is her seeing herself under the ice and emerging as a spirit.

So did this grow my audience?  Yes it did!  And if you follow this blog you will find out when my next post is live, and I will tell you how.

Creating A Children’s Picture Book Illustration Portfolio - Tips for Improving Your Portfolio - Part 3

This post continues my series about creating a children’s picture book illustration portfolio. First I covered quantity and quality and then I covered format and content. In this post I dig deeper into content and suggest some tips and tools for improving your work, I start by showing the new work I have added to my portfolio (if you just want the tips scroll down to the end of this post):

"The Four Seater", Gouache by Claire O'Brien

"Laughter in the Leaves" Ink by Claire O'Brien

"Boy at the Computer" Pencil by Claire O'Brien

"Horsebox" Ink by Claire O'Brien

In previous posts I established that my aims are to:

• Produce work in a landscape format.
• Produce consistent looking sequential images that feature characters doing different actions and showing different emotions.
• Include more settings/backgrounds (move away from white backgrounds)

I have removed “When Mum Came Back”  because it is in portrait format and on a white background.  I have removed Jack Frost as, though it has a background, it is in portrait format and is too ‘Fantasy’ to stay (I may remake this image one day, as I would like to try and the capture a winter scene and the Jack Frost character more successfully and in a children’s picture book style).

“When Mum Came Back” Gouache by Claire O'Brien

"Jack Frost" Ink and Watercolour by Claire O'Brien

As a result of these changes, I have increased the quantity of my portfolio from six images to eight and hopefully raised the quality too.  The majority of the images are in landscape format now but I must aim for all of them to be.  The new illustrations don’t add enough action, the dogs in the horse box, the family on the sofa and the boy at the desk are all at static and at rest really.  Only the girls laughing in the leaves are mid-action. I’m not sure if I have successfully shown different emotion yet too with the new work, there is joy in the girls in the leaves and tiredness of the family on the sofa but neither of these are sequential which help show a change in their emotions.  Unfortunately there are no background settings in the new pictures so I have actually added more white space! 

My Portfolio at a Glance by Claire O'Brien

What tips will help me, and you, improve our portfolios?  Here are three suggestions:

Make Lots of Work! 

The more work you make, the more chances you’ll have of increasing the size and quality of your portfolio.  If the standard of your work is not yet portfolio-ready, making lots of work gets the bad stuff out, as Disney animator and drawing teacher, Walt Stanchfield said: 

“We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better”.  

Making lots of work helps you practice your craft, you can only improve!  If you are stuck with what to make work about, draw from life so you do not rely on your style and what you think things look like, again this can only improve your work.

Look At The Best Work Currently Being Published!

Analyse what the illustrators and designers are doing in a children's picture book spread so that you can emulate it in your own work.  Look at the backgrounds, are the characters in white space or in a fully illustrated setting?  What sort of settings come up a lot?  Where are the characters placed in the spread?  Does it change depending on viewpoint? Long shots, closeups, bird’s eye views, etc. What are the characters doing? What do their poses, gestures and movement directions show us about what is happening in the story?  Does the character’s pose and expression convey an emotion?  Does the lighting echo the emotion, add to the mood?  Where has the illustrator left space for the text? Is it a white space or a quiet part of the illustration?  Is the illustration in duet with the text, showing what the text says or is it counterpoint and saying something different? 

Evaluate And Be Critical About Your Own Work!

Look at your work as a whole, add all of your portfolio images into one document and look at them on the screen or in a print out.  What stands out? Is it for good reasons or bad?  What similarities are there?  Look at the viewpoints you have used, where is your camera? Is it always close, far away, straight on?.  What are your backgrounds like?  Non existent like mine or fully realised?  Do you always use the same colour palette?  Is it always saturated or muted? Do your characters always face the front or the side but never anywhere in-between?  Are they always making the same pose or expression?  Do your characters look different to each other? Are they the same gender or age?  If all these things are similar, draw them differently to show variety and skill in your work.

Well, I still feel my portfolio does not quite fit the bill of a children’s picture book portfolio yet.  I’m going to follow my own tips and really focus on creating sequential images that feature characters doing different actions and showing different emotions in a background!  I’m also going to start a series of monthly posts called “Spread of Wonder” where I’ll present an example of a published children’s picture book spread that I admire and tell you why I think it is so great, follow my blog so that you get a notification of when I post it. And if you are stuck for what to actually draw check out these great suggestions from Robin Rosenthal.

Creating A Children’s Picture Book Illustration Portfolio - Format and Content - What to Put In? - Part 2

In my first post on the subject of Creating A Children’s Picture Book Illustration Portfolio I talked about the quantity and quality of the images.  In this post I’d like to explore format and content, by that I mean what the actual images show and how they are presented.  I will use my findings to create action points for me to apply to my own portfolio as it presently stands.

The Format of Children’s Picture Book Illustrations

Based on my observation of current children’s picture books, illustrations destined for the printed page are mostly printed in landscape format, spanning double page spreads.  In the past we saw more of single spread images and spot images and these are useful if you need more than the allocated 32 pages to tell the story.  

The Content of Children’s Picture Book Illustrations

Illustrations in children’s picture books are sequential in that they have multiple images that tell a story that happens over time.  This means that there is a requirement to be consistent in their execution, characters have to be ‘on model’, that is they have to have the same proportions and features and wear the same clothes from page to page (unless the story dictates otherwise).  Colours have to match from image to image.  Locations and props also need to be consistent in the same way.  Sequential storytelling art by its nature shows characters doing lots of actions and having different emotions and feelings.  And again, unless the story demands it, the art is produced in a consistent same style and medium. 

Appraising the Format and Content of the Work in My Own Portfolio

Okay, here is what my portfolio currently looks like, as whole, as seen on my website:

Disregarding its quality, I have a minimum desired quantity of six illustrations, of mainly human subjects, painted traditionally with gouache on paper.  I also have a digital piece, an ink and watercolour and a scraperboard.  

This is a tonal gouache sketch of a spread from one of my picture books that I am working on.  I think it is the strongest piece of work in my portfolio as it is has storytelling and is in a complete setting that conveys mood and atmosphere.  This has been affirmed to me by its selection in the 2014 SCBWI (British Isles) Showcase Exhibition a goal that I expressed a wish to achieve back in July when I helped to hang the 2013 Showcase at Seven Stories.

Baby Bouncer is painted in gouache with a touch of digital, set in an interior setting, it hopefully shows consistency in depicting a character and is sequential showing different emotions and action.

When Mum Came Back is a gouache showing a group in exaggerated action, with different emotions.

Outdoor Girl and Sidekick is me trying to capture my gouache style digitally.  I like the characters but I'm not sure of their emotions here, they're perhaps a bit neutral.

Jack Frost is painted with ink and watecolour and is me attempting to draw like Arthur Rackham. Things in favour of this illustration are that is set in a forest setting and I like the rendering of the body.  The storytelling not quite there and the aesthetic is perhaps more fantasy than picture book. 

This Crooked Way is a scraperboard and I like the design style dictated by the medium, but it would need refining if I were to do more of these.   Again perhaps the aesthetic is more fantasy than picture book.

Action Points

So here are my conclusions about the format and content of my children's picture book illustration portfolio and some suggested action points to implement in order to improve it, who knows they may apply to your own portfolio:

• Produce future work in landscape format.
• Produce consistent looking sequential images that show characters doing different actions and showing different emotions.
• Include more settings/backgrounds (move away from white backgrounds)

Further Reading
Here are some good links to what others have to say about children's picture book illustration portfolios:

• Lynne Chapman's professional view on character and characterisation
• Donald Wu gives his professional opinion for ordering your portfolio and good advice on style and content.
• Eliza Wheeler shares her SCBWI feedback on improving her portfolio.