I Love Being an Illustrator...

I LOVE what I do...

Today was a wonderful reminder of why I love being a creative soul who makes pictures for her job.  It was an early morning and somewhat dicey weather as I left Moncton just after 6:30 to drive up to Chipman, New Brunswick for two days of school visits through our Provincial Writers In The Schools Program.  It  had begun to snow just as I got on the highway and roads got slippery about halfway there, but I took my time.  The scenery into rural New Brunswick was amazing as I drove past farm fields or forests of trees draped in snow.  Logging trucks coming the other way made me keep my eyes on the road.

I arrived at the school safely just after O Canada and had time before the scheduled class visits to do an enrichment session with a dozen of the children at the school who love to draw. What a treat to get them to practice using their imaginations with 8 different exercises.  I also swore them to secrecy about how tall I was...

When the first class came in, I was sitting down in front of the Smartboard on a chair and they arranged themselves on the carpet in the middle of the room.  I welcomed them, told them who I was and what I did for my job.  I explained that illustrators often have to draw things that don’t exist... like purple cows wearing roller skates... or a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a tutu.. or a hippo making a snow angel.  At that point, I explain how an illustrator needs to use their imagination and think about how things look.  I choose the smallest child in the class and ask them to come to the front of the world.

“Suppose a squirrel makes a snow angel...” I explain and I ask the child how they make snow angels.  I get them to stand with their arms out wide, ready to make a snow angel.  I explain that the squirrel’s tail would also make another part of the snow angel that humans don’t have in theirs.  Then I smile.  “I would be more of a GIRAFFE making a snow angel!” I say as I stand up from my chair....way up!  I am 6’5” without the heels and 6’8” with them.  I wave my long arms and legs about with a smile as the children gasp and the little victim.. er... volunteer stares up at me in amazement.  I send my “squirrel” back to their place and begin to ask them about hippos.  I explain that I can’t borrow a real hippo from the zoo, so I need to think about what makes hippos different as an animal.  Basically, they have tiny arms and legs, big noses and big bums.... so they make DEEP snow angels.  Then I show them the painting I did for my grandmother who loved hippos (I’ll add it to this blog once I get home).

The rest of the session is spend talking about how illustrators and authors come up with ideas by asking “What If?” and then, after the power point talk, I use my tablet to draw a quick, interactive doodle with each class where I give the kids crazy choices and they vote by raising their hands to guide what our picture turns out to be.

I save each class file as a .jpg and once I get home, I will redraw each class picture then resend it to the school to play with.

I really, really. REALLY love my job!

Tomorrow, I get to go speak to Middle and High school students about what is it like having a “nontraditional” career.... I can’t wait!

How Does A Dragon Say Goodbye?

There are times when a picture can say it better than any words I can write.  It was a stormy day here in the Maritimes as the first heavy snowfall of the season played havoc with schools and road.  I also discovered that one of my favourite authors on the whole planet passed away two days ago.

I was a gangly 13 year old when I first read the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy and the sub trilogy of Dragon Song, Dragon Singer, Dragon Drums.  Somehow, between those pages where Anne McCaffrey wove such intricate and riveting stories,  I found hours of solace and comfort during my parents’ divorce, the adjustment to high school and the general trials that all teenagers face.  I know I was just one of many readers to long for a world with dragons in it.  Like Madeleine L’Engle, Anne’s stories challenged me to keep believing in those unbelievable and magical creatures that the rest of the world tends to want to stuff in a box marked “For Children Only”.  

I don’t think I would have loved Fantasy quite as much in a world without McCaffrey’s tales.  I know that drawing, designing and creating my own dragons flowed from those early images that her words would paint in my brain as I read each story or dreamed of slipping into that world.

I saw Anne McCaffrey at DragonCon in 2005 when I celebrated my 40th birthday by painting myself green and entering the Costume contest as She-Hulk.  While she looked frail, her eyes still sparkled and her son, Todd was ever at her side.  His stories set in the world she created will ease the loss I feel today... a loss that is such a pale echo of what he must be going through.

I am sure that dragons and fans are keening around the world right now...

Surfacing from a LOT of drawing!

The thing about deadlines is that they tend to drive you just a little crazy.  

You find yourself chewing pencils, rubbing sleep from your eyes and wondering over and over what lead you to choose a creative career instead of one that would let you work 9 to 5, relax in the evenings and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Does that kind of life really exist out there anymore?

I love to draw the impossible and the illustrations for Emily Finds a Dragon are no exception... but this time I am juggling two major deadlines as well as substitute teaching during the day...

It makes intravenous caffeine look like a brilliant idea!

Reaffirming my calling...

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who won a big contest and then decided that she was going to draw pictures for her job when she grew up...

33 years later, I am still trying to find the balance between creating art and earning a living.  For 16 years, while my kids were smaller, I designed counted cross stitch and ran a business from home, but about 3 years ago it became increasingly apparent that what I created was too easy to steal.  Of the 98 designs I published and sold, at least 57 of them are out there as illegal scans on websites that a dedicated group of stitchers and I try to get removed on a weekly basis.

Two years ago, I made the decision to jump back into illustration and have been steadily building up local clients as well as working on illustrations for a third children’s book.  I also began working as a substitute teacher to  help cover some of the bills and discovered that I truly love working with kids of all ages.

I thought I had this year under control in terms of finding the balance between working and illustrating until life threw us a few curve balls.  Losing my father to cancer in December affected me more deeply that I first realized.  The past 15 weeks have also seen my own mother hospitalized briefly and my mother-in-law undergo treatment for a medical mystery that has involved at least 2 surgeries and a few close calls.  With our biological fathers no longer living and our mothers getting older, Nick and I both had to wrestle with that perception shift that happens as you realize someday you will be the trunk of your family tree instead of one of the branches.  While his mom seems to be on the mend at last, her recovery will still take some time.  

Through it all, I worked on a major illustration project and spent 51 out of the last 85 teachable days in classrooms around the city, but I found it all too easy to get caught up in the busyness of life instead ot taking time to sketch and look inwards to that internal compass that keeps us on the right path.

Most days, I wasn’t sure I had anything worth saying to my family members, let alone the world, and so my blogs fell silent.

In this era of global communications, tweeting and instant messaging, letting your blogs go quiet for over 2 months is almost unheard of.  Media talks to us about branding, market share, exposure and other top-of-mind-awareness terms that lead many of us to believe we should be constantly wired in to the wider world. Promote yourself on YouTube and you  might be discovered!  Put your illustrations out there everywhere and publishers are sure to find you!  Every time I went browsing the Internet to look at other illustrators, it only made me want to crawl back into bed and hide.  There are SO many talented artists out there all struggling to do the same thing. 

Wrestling with the mortality of two women I love and realizing that my daughters are growing into young women who will go off and start lived of their own over then next 10 years provided a major  opportunity for self-examination.  What I discovered is that my style is my own because I am the only one who can draw like me.  I need to stop worrying about how it compares to other illustrators and just be myself.

What do I really want to do with my artistic talent?  You’ll be seeing a lot more pictures and posts on this blog now because after all the soul-searching, I have rediscovered where my compass truly points.  

It points me right back to an empty page full of possibilities.

So what have I been doodling?

Here is a peek at a few of the line illustrations from the Ambulance NB colouring book that is in every ambulance around the province and used to explain how an emergency works to children.

Here are two of my favourite illustrations produced during an enrichment day with Author Paul Burns at Magnetic Hill School.  

Groups of kids wrote collaborative stories which I then sketched out on the smart board with my tablet and took home to re-ink.  Each child then received a copy of the line illustrations to colour and make their own.

My latest project was an illustration emergency to help a friend who’d been left high and dry by some students who’d promised to illustrate her children’s story for a Master’s level Education class.  I had 2 days to complete 11 illustrations, so they were quick, down and dirty illustrations done in Photoshop Elements with my tablet. 

 It was much better than clip art for her and a great practice session for me.  I did make her promise that I could rework them at a later date if she does anything with the story in the future.

So there’s a peek at what I’ve been up to during my absence.  Get used to seeing a lot more!

A Joke Contest Instead...

OK... so I discovered that some of you were WAY too afraid to show off your own doodles, so this month’s contest is all about being FUNNY instead of drawing. So this time, I'll make it easier.  I drew up this cartoon to ask the joke:

Why did the Dragon Cross the Road?

Just post your answer as a comment below and I will award the leftover Artist Trading Card from the December contest (the other 2 went to the only two artists brave enough to enter!) as the prize on February 1st when I post the winner’s name on my Dragon Dreams website. I will mail your prize anywhere in the world... so put on your thinking caps!

Trying to give back when you were given to...

Sometimes... I have to draw it instead of say it.  I tied this into my Inhaling Creativity blog, but when I heard the sad news yesterday, I thought in pictures first.

This song was one of the first recordings I remember listening to where I understood the words.  It also was the fist song that made me want to create something so that I could re-work an ending to a story.

When I was little, I thought that Puff was sparkly blue or pink until I realized that people always seem to associate those colours with gender, which this dragon has never needed.

Goodbye Mary.  I am thankful that your creativity and music made a difference in my life... and that is really what Art is all about.