I can't do color

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

-Vincent Van Gogh

Yesterday while reading illustration blogs, I came across a comment where someone said that she could never get an agent because she's in her 40's, and no agent would ever choose to represent a middle-aged woman.

That's entirely untrue, but as long as she tells herself that it is, it will be.

I was at an illustrator meetup a few weeks ago where a new guy nervously showed us his portfolio. He was falling all over himself to point out that he's "not really an illustrator" and he "can't do color at all" and he "can't draw people." (Actually his drawings were very strong.)

While we all have our weaknesses and difficulties, but nothing is impossible unless you tell yourself that it is. When I started out at art school, my portfolio consisted entirely of pencil black-and-white drawings, so I told people "I don't know how to do color." But I set out to learn how to do color, and now I can do it; in fact, it's one of my strengths. What if I had told myself "I can't do color"?

What do you tell yourself you can't do?

Edit: The past two weeks my husband has been trying to get me into biking. However, it's been very difficult for me, because most of my life I have told myself that I am not a strong or athletic person, that I don't do exercise. Whenever I bike the messages "I can't do this" goes through my head. I confessed this to my husband and he said, "Remember your blog post, Kelley! It's not that you can't do it, it's that you don't know how to yet!" That's right, he quoted my own blog to me. I should probably stop giving out advice on this blog.

Book Covers Before and After

The cool thing about book covers is that they're made to work together with text, but they also stand on their own. I find it really interesting to see what book cover illustrations look like both with and without text. Here are some great examples from some insanely talented illustrators.

Illustrated by Laura Bifano

Illustrated by Ryan Andrews

Illustrated by Vivenne To

Illustrated by Dan Dos Santos

Illustrated by Erwin Madrid

Illustrated by Charlie Bowater

Personal Work: Under Wildwood

This may sound silly, but the Wildwood Chronicles were one of the reasons I wanted to move to Portland. In this book series, 7th graders Prue and Curtis discover a magical forest outside of Portland. Written by Colin Meloy and beautifully illustrated by Carson Ellis, the books are seriously good.

Some of Carson Ellis's illustrations from Wildwood

For the Todd Lockwood TLC Workshop last April, we were told to choose a narrative that we wanted to illustrate. I chose a scene from Under Wildwood, the 2nd book in the series, where Prue and Curtis are being cornered by evil shapeshifting foxes. The foxes demand information that would doom that children's friends; Prue counters by threatening to cut the rope bridge and send them all into the abyss.

I was doing this scene from memory so some details may not be accurate. (For example, I left out Septimus the talking rat; sorry Septimus.) I should have re-read the chapter first...but I didn't.

Since the workshop's focus was mainly about composition, I spent an excruciatingly long time (for me) on the thumbnails. At first my thumbnails were very tight and detailed, but Todd encouraged me to loosen up and just scribble, so the thumbnails looked like tiny abstract paintings.

After I had a thumbnail that I thought worked, we went outside to a playground, scared away the little children, and took reference photos. Much self-conscious giggling was had. Thanks to Charles McKinnon for being a good sport and playing Curtis.

Next I worked on turning the thumbnail into a rough. For me this is by far the most difficult part of the process. This is where all the question answering happens. You can scribble something in a thumbnail and say "this is a building" and it looks fine; but then it comes time to actually build the building and you start kicking yourself for thinking a building would be a good idea. Todd noticed that I was having trouble and did a little paintover, bringing the rough back under control. (If only I always had an expert around to do this for me!)

I chose to keep the painting black and white, as if it was an interior illustration for a middle-grade book. I enjoy reading and illustrating middle-grade, so I wanted to practice my b&w painting skills.

Moral of the story: don't mess with 7th graders on rope bridges. Also, go read the Wildwood Chronicles. Thanks Todd for your help with this illustration.

Helpful Links for Illustrators

• The 20 Most Useful Lessons I've Learnt as a Creative Blogger by Red Lemon Club. "You need to share things that keep you thinking all day (at night is a good indication that you are very interested!), because then adding new posts becomes something you look forward to, rather than being a chore."
• Advice for New Illustrators and Art School Graduates by Dani Jones. "Though a lot of people might view illustration, writing, and publishing as an 'impossible' field of work to get into, it really does reward persistence and hard work most of the time."
• Approaching Agents with Confidence by Jennifer Represents. "When you are approaching an agent - DON'T say 'I don't really know how to write a query' or 'I'm not really a writer' or anything of the kind. I get this all the time. Daily."
• Will You Look at my Portfolio? by William O'Connor. "The problem was that every single portfolio was the same. Pencil drawings on loose leaf paper of manga characters, superhero panels taken straight from the 'How to Draw the Marvel Comics Way' book, celebrity portraits copied from photographs, and paintings taken right off of on-line workshop challenges."
• Detective Storytelling by James Gurney. "Paintings that tell stories, such as this one, are often called 'narrative' or 'illustrative.' But neither term adequately describes the kind of storytelling that a picture can do."
• Now You Know by Nebezial. A short comic explaining the real reason women's armor doesn't cover their midriffs.

Cricket Magazine cover - Dragonflower

Last year Cricket magazine contacted me regarding my illustration called "Dragonflower," which I drew for a homework assignment while at the Academy of Art. (I got a B on it. Art school is no joke.) Cricket wanted to license it for the cover of their May issue, as well as have me design a matching illustration for the table of contents page.

This is the original illustration. The art director told me that Cricket likes to have some sort of "surprise" element on the back cover; something that continues the narrative from the front cover. She asked me to add an additional dragon to the back, so I suggested a dragon made of stars, as if the energy from the four elemental dragons is bringing the space around them to life.

On the table of contents page I wanted to focus on the little girl who is riding on the fire dragon. The girl is so tiny (it was a requirement of the homework assignment) that sometimes people don't even notice that she's there. I sent the art director a few different ideas for the table of contents page; luckily she chose my favorite rough. Having the girl stand on the fire dragon while waving to the star dragon helps bring the two sides of the cover together.

This whole assignment was fun because Cricket gave me so much artistic freedom. The art director has even been sending me compliments people have given this month's cover. In fact, this week I received an email from a Cricket reader with the subject line "A awesome drawing I saw":

Dear Kelly McMorris,
I saw the cover you did for Cricket magazine : Dragonflower. And I think it is totally awesome!!! It's funny because my first look was COOL then hey! it's Mina from The Tapestry Series. Because Mina finds a baby dragon and she names it Ember. And the girl in your drawing is on a fire dragon. I think the starry dragon on the back is like the all mother or something or all 4 dragons combined.

p.s I think my friend would like it too since we both like dragons.

You can pick up a copy of Cricket magazine at Barnes & Noble.

Lessons Learned from Spectrum FAL 2014

So Spectrum FAL 3 has come and gone, and my weeks of planning worked out pretty well.

• Introduction
• Part 1: the postcards
• Part 2: the booklets
• Part 3: the vertical banner
• Part 4: the prints
• Part 5: putting it all together

I was able to easily assemble and disassemble my table, and it looked pretty good when it was all set up. There was so much to see at the show, I know I didn't see everything. Among the artists I was lucky enough to meet were Wylie Beckert, Scott Murphy, Sarah Silkwood, Will Kelly, Abigail Larson, Cory Godbey, Wes Burt, Justin Gerard, Annie Stegg, Noah Bradley and Eric Fortune. (Among many others!)

Thanks to everyone who stopped by my table to tell me that they read my blog! Hi guys!

Some highlights of the weekend:

• When Cory Godbey bought my art book. (!!!!)
• When a cute girl, a high schooler I think, got all giggly and twitterpated when she saw me, like I was some kind of celebrity.
• Hearing Justin Gerard gush about his new wife, Annie, and how wonderful she is. (awww)
• Receiving an unexpected pep talk about being true to myself from Sarah Silkwood
• Drawing a doodle in one of my art books for a customer:

Things I learned from the weekend:

1. It's better with a booth buddy. I manned the table by myself on Friday, then on Saturday my dear friend Anna joined me and we shared a table. Everything was much more fun with her around. We were able to switch off running the table and browsing the show, or bringing food and snacks for the other. Despite the fact that English is Anna's second language, she was better at making small talk with visitors at our table than I was.
2. There are two types of items: attention-getters and sellers. Beautiful, oversized prints and canvases attract foot traffic, but don't necessarily sell. I didn't see anyone in the artist alley sell a really big piece, but they did seem to stop people in their tracks and bring them over to the table. Once an interested visitor is at the table, they're more likely to buy small items. (This was my experience, anyway. I'm sure it's different if you're a well-known artist.)
3. If you give something away for free, bring a lot of it. People will collect anything that's free. Every table had free business cards, many also had free postcards. I ran out of business cards on the last day. So if you're giving something away, bring at least three or four hundred copies. 
4. People like flipping through books. It's something they can interact with rather than just stare at, I guess. My art book was pretty popular (relative to the rest of my merch) and people spent time flipping through it and my portfolio.

My most popular items were the postcards, followed by the art book, then the prints. My original pencils did not sell at all; in fact it seemed like people hardly even noticed that they were there. So that's something for me to consider; maybe I need to change how they were displayed.

The money I made doesn't come close to covering the cost of the trip, but I'm hoping that if I continue to attend shows I'll start see some benefits. My main purpose was to simply get my name out there and to meet some cool people - which I did! I hope to go again next year.

Preparing for an art show: putting it all together

• Introduction
• Part 1: the postcards
• Part 2: the booklets
• Part 3: the vertical banner
• Part 4: the prints
• Conclusion

I'm tired, so this is going to be brief. Between illustration work, preparing for Spectrum FAL, and fighting off a cold, it's been a busy week. Spectrum starts this Friday! I am flying overnight on Thursday, won't that be fun. Sarcasm.

Now that all of my precious merchandise has arrived in good condition, next I had to display it. I purchased a tiered wooden display stand from Clear Solutions, which breaks apart so it can fit in my suitcase.

I also went to Michael's Crafts and had a few of my pencil drawings custom matted, and purchased folding wooden easels to display them.

Finally I did a dress rehearsal on my dining room table, to see how it all looked together.

Not too shabby for my first table, right? Now I just need a male booth babe.

Please pray that the airline doesn't lose my luggage. Thanks.

See you at Spectrum!

Preparing for an art show: the prints

Next in my series about preparing for Spectrum FAL. So far I have postcards and an art booklet to sell at the show; next I wanted to make some prints. So far this is the only aspect of my preparations that has gone smoothly.

• Introduction
• Part 1: the postcards
• Part 2: the booklets
• Part 3: the vertical banner
• Part 5: putting it all together
• Conclusion

In art school I either printed my art at home, or used OfficeMax. OfficeMax is surprisingly good considering it's only about $.60 per print; however, they're just photo prints. For a show like Spectrum I wanted archival prints on fine art paper.

After some Googling, I discovered Finerworks, which has excellent prices and several types of matte fine art paper. They also sell plastic sleeves for the prints, which is awesome. I chose four of my most popular illustrations and ordered four copies of each.

Meanwhile, my postcards and booklets arrived in the mail, mostly too dark. That's when I learned that I should always lighten my work before printing, but alas, my prints order had already been shipped. Great. Another Kelley fail.

The prints arrived quickly and to my great relief, they look excellent. The matte fine art paper has a subtle texture which really makes the prints look and feel special.

Only one more week until Spectrum! My next task is to matte some original pencil drawings and start putting together my table display.