Beautiful Oops

I just discovered this book for the first time. I spied it in my local B & N while Christmas shopping. I read the book right there and - wow - it was so familiar to me! I loved it and I instantly wished I'd come up with the concept of creating something deliberate from your 'mistakes'. It's especially important to get this concept through successfully to kids. They are so receptive to trying new ideas, and any self-defeating bad habits that they may have picked up really haven't had enough time to make tracks yet. 

Hey, look—I have absolutely ZERO against erasers (or the Undo tool, or the History palette, for that matter!). In fact, I embrace all of the above! But, when I was a young kid and I would draw, I developed an interesting compulsion to refrain from using my eraser. I did it to force myself to see what I could create from my 'mistakes'. To this day, I have absolutely no idea where I got the idea to torture myself this way. but wow, wherever I got the idea, I'm so glad that I did. 
It's a practice that teaches the philosophy of being an artist or creator and how important it is to be able to switch gears when the unexpected happens. It helps to illustrate turning a problem into an opportunity, brainstorming imaginative solutions and then (important:) executing it. The usefulness of this practice can really change the how we see limitations. (Maybe it can help erase them?)

I will remember this one and we definitely will be buying it for future birthdays. I honestly think every kid should have a copy of this book! (In my guesstimation the right age is right around 4.) Happy shopping!

SCBWI Illustrator's Day

I'm posting today, in place of Ali, who is working on some very tight deadlines. So when you see my art, don't want you to think that she has totally changed her style :)

Over the weekend I attended SCBWI's Illustator Day at Fort Mason in San Francisco. I'm a little embarrassed to say that except for attending the summer conference in Los Angeles several years ago, I haven't been to any of their local events. Well no more! It was such an inspiring day, and I met artists that I've followed on the blogs, but never talked to in person.

No, I didn't arrive by helicopter, but I must say the day was so beautiful. No fog as depicted in this photograph. It was warm and sunny and the Marina Green and a park bench was the perfect venue for lunch.

There were two wonderful and inspirational speakers: Barney Saltzberg, who lives in Los Angeles and is a children's book author/illustrator/singer/songwriter....and Christy Ottaviano who is the Editorial Director at Henry Holt & Company and has her own imprint of books. Today I'll talk about my experience with Barney and on Friday I'll blog about the great information I got from Christy.

As you can see from Barney's picture, he loves dogs! In fact, he even wrote and illustrated a book called "I Love Dogs." His talk was full of delicious little tidbits about being an illustrator. He showed slides of his projects in various stages, talked about what worked and what didn't and made every one laugh.

The key idea I got from him was that it is an illustrator's job to illuminate the writing with pictures, not to illustrate the text exactly. So important and not that easy to do. You must push beyond "solution A." So now I'm looking at children's books differently.

I found a beautiful example of how words and art compliment each other, rather than duplicate each other's statements, in the book Illustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury. In Quentin Blake's book Cockatoos, Professor Dupont searches for the elusive birds. Each illustration is constructed so that the reader is allowed to see the birds while they are obscured from the view of the hapless Professor. A little hard to see in this small image, each cockatoo is hiding behind a suitcase.

The text simply reads, "He climbed a ladder and flashed his torch around the attic. They weren't there."

SCBWI offers portfolio reviews at their events. Although there were only two speakers, there were other professionals from publishing houses to give critiques and review work. The "faculty" was given an hour to look at all the portfolios and pick one image that they thought would make a strong image for a promotional piece. I don't really have a print portfolio anymore, as everything seems to be digital these days, so I madly put something together the day before. This is the image that was most popular in my book:

©2009 Deborah Melmon

I was also lucky enough to have Barney Saltzberg give me a private portfolio review. It was very fun to have a chance to talk to him and pick his brain about my style and a book dummy that I was working on.

You can see all of Barney's work on his website and you must check out his latest book Beautiful Oops! which is clever beyond words.

Bunnies, Bunnies, Everywhere!

With Easter right around the corner, our local Barnes & Noble had quite the array of bunnies, chicks, and eggs on display in the Childrens' book department. I have to say, I was a little underwhelmed since the covers and imagery started to blend together. It was either soft & safe, ho hum, or character based, which never interests me. A few stand outs however:

Good Egg, by Barney Saltzberg Super simple graphic book, but really fun and innovative. Every spread is a new mechanical to express 'Good Egg', sit, roll, shake, speak, etc. Just a white egg, and the text 'Good Egg' - but so smart. Actually, follow that link and there is a book trailer where you can see it being read to kids. If I had my wallet that day, I would have either bought the book or let my son play with it - I was afraid he'd damage it, although it wasn't all that delicate I know better!
Numbers, by Jane Smith. Illustrated by Jill McDonald I have a soft spot for all Jill McDonald work. I admired her licensing work when I used to hire artists, and am happy whenever I see her joyful, painterly art. You just get the feeling that she loves all things childhood related. I love the simplicity of this book. Each spread has a giant, chunky number that pops out, revealing that same number of little animals or objects. It's tactile and fun and bold. Gosh, I don't even remember it having anything to do with Easter. But the animals and Spring-ness of it suit the display perfectly.

I realize that I linked to Amazon for those books. So, here's a link to 'Easter Favorites' on Barnes & Nobles website. It's always interesting to see what people are actually buying! I apologize if I implied these were the only two good books on display for Easter. It's just what I noticed while keeping an eye on a 1yr old during story time this week. I don't know if all stores do this, but ours has story time every day at 11am - what a nice program!