First of all, on April 6th, I attended the SCBWI Northern/Central California Spring Conference. Here I had the wonderful opportunity to hear from authors, editors, agents, art directors and illustrators from the publishing business. I attended workshops with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers' amazing art director Laurent Linn and incredible picture book illustrator/author, John Hendrix. John talked about the importance of illustrating to one's strengths and shared with us the grueling saga of publishing his picture book "John Brown: His Fight for Freedom", a book which he described as "unpublishable". John was also kind enough to spend a few minutes with me to review my portfolio and give me some pointers on where my work was strong and where it could be stronger. Laurent's workshop spoke to the character's role in storytelling. We were asked to bring in a series of character design sketches and Laurent reviewed each illustrator's work and with his comments helped explain how "what's on the outside of a character can describe what is on the inside." My character design for The Mad Hatter is below!
Between all of that madness, I also continue work on a series of illustrations I will eventually be selling as prints. The series is based on the four seasons, and features a character I have come to call Guy Fox. All four illustrations have been sketched and I will be coloring the final pieces in the coming weeks. Seen below are all four sketches in seasonal order, beginning with Autumn. I'll be sure to share my progress with you and you'll certainly be the first to know when they are available for purchase!
Needless to say, my April showers have been of the refreshing and sustaining kind. I look forward to reporting on all of the new growth to sprout in May! Until then, thank you for reading!
Josh
