SCBWI LA Conference - More speaker sketches

Here are some additional sketches from my recent trip to the SCBWI LA Conference.



Tracey Adams of Adams Literary gave a great talk titled "Contract Basics: The Art & Science of Publishing Agreements.
I love this kind of thing at SCBWI conferences since it has the effect of reinforcing the fact that SCBWI is a "professional" organization. Plus Tracey obviously enjoys and is very good at her job. Her enthuasiam for the business side of children's books is infectious.


Arthur Levine of Arthur A Levine Books was part of a panel discussion which also included Mark McVeigh, Krista Marino and Elizabeth Parisi. The discussion was about "Professional Criticism:How to Receive It and What To Do With It". This was a pretty serious topic handled in a really fun light-hearted way. It was nice to hear that editors and art directors are as nervous about giving critiques as we all are to recieve them


Rachel Griffiths headlined a breakout session titled "How to Catch and Editors Attention". This was great fun because I know Rachel best from my trips to NYC to do portfolio drop-offs when she was Arthur Levine's assistant. Our meetings are typcially quite brief, involving Rachel handing me back my portfolio with a nice note or comment. Since it's a bit tougher in recent years to schedule face to face meetings with editors and ADs these interactions were often the highlight of a day spent running all over the city. So attending Rachel's session was an opportunity to get a clearer sense of who Rachel is both as a person and as an editor. Turns out she's a really funny and engaging speaker.

More sketches from the conference to come . . .

SCBWI LA Conference

I recently attended the SCBWI LA Summer Conference.
As ever it was fun, informative and exhausting.
The weekend is jam-packed with speakers and breakout sessions. One of the things that I tend to do when taking notes is do quick sketches of the person giving the talk. So while my notes are almost unintelligible to anyone but me I thought that I'd post some of the sketches of the invited speakers.
First up on Friday was Walter Dean Meyers .



Followed by Peter Brown the illustrator of "Chowder" and the sequel "Bouncing Chowder"

Wonderland Gallery Pre-Opening Show!

This last Thursday was the montly event called "Last Thursday" for the artsy district that our studio is located in.
My studio partner and I have turned our studio into an illustration gallery for the event. This month was our "pre-opening" show, which featured the work of Lee White and myself.


Here is the gallery sign (just arrived in the nick of time!).



The front room with my work (for this month anyway)


Moving into the second room with Lee's work.



This is what the space looked like for the rest of the evening -- nice and busy!

The next time the gallery will be open to the public (we're always available by appointment) is Thursday July 26. The front gallery will showcase "Brewster the Rooster" illustrated by Lee White. Original paintings will be on display, and books will be available for signing and purchase. The second room will continue to feature prints and originals by Lee and myself.

PIXEL SHOW

This last weekend was PIXEL: Artists who use the computer
The show featured artwork, demos, and discussions by illustrators from all over the country who use digital mediums.

The invited artists include:
J. Otto Seibold
LeUyen Pham
David Hohn
Tadahiro Uesugi
Darrel Anderson
Martin French
Echo Chernik
Brian Despain
Greg Epkes
Jon Foster
Jason Felix
Lee Moyer
Tyson Mangelsdorf

There were a number of moderated discussions and demos by invited artists but I particularly enjoyed J. Otto Seibold's talk about his work. Here's a picture of J. Otto as he was talking:




I'm looking forward to participating similar illustrator-oriented events here in Portland.

New Books Coming This Fall 2007

These are the covers for the first two of a four book series I'm doing with Waterbrook Press an imprint of Random House Publishers. Look for these two to be published in October 2007.