NJ SCBWI Illustrator's Day

I was able to go to an Illustrator's Day in Princeton yesterday. My favorite part was having my most recent piece critiqued by other members in the field and by Patrick Collins, art director for Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. I am pretty happy with the results and the reaction Patrick had to my piece. I was also given the opportunity to have Laurent Linn give me a in depth portfolio critique. He was so helpful and pointed out what was good and bad about almost every piece I had. I really know what I have to work on now and have a clear vision of what I need to do when I create new pieces so I can slowly work on weeding out the weaker pieces. I also loved that I was able to browse through other members portfolios. I recognized some work through childrensillustrators.com and am so happy I was able to meet their maker! I saw many familiar faces from previous conferences and love how everyone is just so friendly! Overall a wonderful day and I can not wait until the next one. I give major props to Leeza Hernandez for making this all happen! Here is my finished assignment. I also brought the preliminary sketches I had posted a few posts ago.

SCBWI Conference Assignment

So I was going to wait until I was finished with these paintings to post anything but I am really excited about it and can not wait. I am going to the NJ SCBWI Illustrator's Conference next month and everyone had a choice of manuscripts to pick a double paged spread to do. I sent in my original ideas to Patrick Collins, the art director for Henry Holt Books for Young Readers and with his comments I revised my sketches, almost completely and am so happy with the result. I am currently working on both paintings now and bring in the finished pieces for a critique at the conference. Here is my original sketch and then beneath it the revised version which will be translated into paint. Yay can't wait for the conference!!!