I finally met #ShaunTan (happy, happy dance)

In case you're new here, the one thing I can tell you about me is, I can't get enough of Shaun Tan.

I had never been to a national SCBWI conference before the one that just happened in New York, and all it took for me to get there was to see Shaun Tan's name on the keynote speaker list. I swear I was the first one in line.

My first meeting with Shaun went pretty much like this: On Friday, the first day of the conference, I was on the elevator by myself heading up to my hotel room on the 30th floor. When the elevator stopped, the doors opened and there waiting to get on, by himself, was Shaun Tan. I sucked in a breath, but somehow nothing came out. We stepped aside for each other to enter and exit. The doors closed between us

I spent Saturday morning waiting for a moment (and finding the nerve for) when he wasn't busy talking to somebody else. When I finally caught him waiting for the elevator yet again, I introduced myself and told him he was the reason I was at the conference. The elevator opened, we stepped in and joined a couple of other people already inside. I had barely started talking again when the nice lady beside me reached out her hand to Shaun and said, "Hi. I'm Jane Yolen. We've actually met before."

Not kidding.

Then the other lady in the elevator said, "Shaun Tan and Jane Yolen in the same elevator together. What are the chances!"

Yes. What are the chances.

We didn't have a chance to say any more before the elevator stopped at his floor (our floor), and he got out.

I did not.

Finally, on the last day of the conference just before our train left the station (literally; we rode the train to NY), I was working the autograph party as an SCBWI Illustrator Coordinator and waited for my opportunity. Shaun signed books for three hours straight (an hour longer than he was scheduled), and after the line disappeared, I finally (finally) got my photo op.

As you can see, he signed all his books for me, even though he had been sitting there for three hours. He was kind, patient and unassuming, and if his two had been the only talks I had heard all weekend, I would have left completely satisfied.

First Neil Gaiman last November, and now Shaun Tan. That's it. Is there really anybody else?

I guess I can die happy.

The @BrothersHilts: Illustrators I Greatly Admire: Exhibit F

The Brothers Hilts (with an "s" at the end, and not because there are two of them)
 
Last fall sometime (I'm figuring around Halloween because that's when Ben and Sean told me Barnes and Noble featured their book in displays for the holiday) I picked up a copy of The Insomniacs, written by Karina Wolf and illustrated by The Brothers Hilts. I picked it up, of course, because I always judge a book by its cover, and this one was not your typical one.

I also had the opportunity and pleasure of meeting the two of them at the SCBWI conference in New York a couple of weeks ago. They're fun, they're genuine and so very humble considering their talents.

If you're wondering how they work their images together, you're not alone. They like to experiment with lots of mediums, but in this case Ben (the elder of the Hilts) worked in charcoal. His part of the images are more dreamlike with less sharpness on the edges. Sean (the younger one, if you haven't figured that out) worked his part in pencil. His half of the images added the linear crispness. They combine each of their drawings together in separate layers in Photoshop, tweaking away parts of each that might be too distracting. When it comes to adding the color, they each pick and choose which illustrations speak to them, and those are the ones they work on. Once they get started, if the color isn't working for them, the other brother steps in to help. Their method seems to be working rather well.

My favorite page from the book is this two-page spread featuring the bats.

To give you another idea of what they can do, here's one of the illustrations from their site. It's a re-imagining of the cover of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, and I think it's fantastic. So conceptual and simply stated. Just beautiful.

If you would like to get to know them a little better, they were featured on the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog last December.

Very much looking forward to their next project.

New portfolio to Issuu

I've uploaded to Issuu the portfolio I'll be bringing to the New York SCBWI conference next week, and here it is:

My illustrations @SCBWI Bologna

Each year, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) mans a booth at the Bologna Children's Book Fair, and they take along a portfolio of pieces from selected members. I entered my work and was selected to be a part of that portfolio, along with just 39 other people. I'm very grateful and excited that my illustrations will be participating!

Along with the physical portfolio in Italy, SCBWI also displays a gallery of art from the participating illustrators on their Website. Here's the link to this year's page. Bummer having a last name that starts with a letter of the alphabet that's toward the end and requiring a scroll down, but there you go. I'm happy to be there.

The image up above is one of the illustrations that will be included on my page in the physical portfolio, and it's the one I chose to represent my style on the SCBWI Web gallery.

My illustrations are heading to Italy! #BolognaBookFair

At the end of January I submitted a page of my illustrations for possible inclusion in the SCBWI portfolio at the Bologna Book Fair, and this would be the page I submitted.

The portfolio selection team notified me that my page was chosen to be included (yay!). Not only will it be in a physical portfolio at the book fair, but it will also be included on their site. Once my image becomes available (along with the rest of the portfolio), they will send me a link to it which I'll post here.

Here was how they described what they're doing:

"A portfolio of SCBWI illustrator members work will be on display at the SCBWI Showcase during the 2012 Bologna Book Fair and available for browsing by publishers, agents and other attendees from across the world. In addition, a digital version of the portfolio will be posted on this webpage with thumbnails of artwork and contact information as we did for our 2010 Illustrators' Gallery."

The fair will run March 19-22 this year.

A Little Like Shaun Tan

A few weeks ago I finally made my way to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I wasn't there to visit the place, although we have plans of returning next year for actual Gettysburg reasons. So much history. I feel so attracted to something there.

But this post isn't supposed to be about Gettysburg.

I hauled my butt across half the state for an SCBWI conference, and yeah, I came home with lots of thoughts to think loudly about. But I'll attempt to narrow those thoughts down to just one: Jordan Brown.

I had a manuscript critique with Jordan, a Senior Editor at Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray, imprints of HarperCollins Children's Books. The story I had written was a short story I had finished for a fiction writing class I took about eight years ago (has it been that long?). My professor at the time loved it, and in his comments at the end wrote, "Get it published."

And yet.

The story wasn't long enough. I knew it wouldn't make a complete book. But, being an illustrator—and pictures are easier for me than words—I had the brilliant idea (I thought, at the time) to pad the short story with pictures to make it long enough. Maybe even convert it into a graphic novel (Mr. Punch-style). Yeah. A graphic novel. Then the words would be at a minimum, and I could tell a lot of the story just using images.

Yeah. Images.

But Jordan didn't really agree.

He was thinking more along the lines of, say, a novel.

"You mean those things with all the words?"

"Those things with all the words."

But there was something in the story he had latched onto. Something he didn't want me to lose as I was writing more. Something he likened to...

Shaun Tan.

Shaun Tan? Really? How could he know?

What he liked about what I had written was all the stuff I hadn't written. How you didn't know when or where the story was taking place. Was it in the past? Or the future? Or was it even on this planet?

He totally got it.

He said it seemed like I was working in the sort of space that Shaun Tan occupies (not bad company to be in), but a very difficult one to break into (not what I wanted to hear).

It wasn't until I read this article in the Guardian today (and written by Neil Gaiman, no less) that I realized how right Jordan was. The paring things down. The fictional landscape. The far future, the distant past.

I had decided before I left the conference to take Jordan's advice and write the whole thing as a novel. He even suggested I take a look at A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, not just for the loss of the protagonist's mother, but also (as I figured out when I got the book) for the illustrations. They're beautiful. I thought, yeah, writing all those words is going to take a while, but I can supplement all those words with some really cool pictures.

Pictures. My comfort food.

But as soon as I finished the book that little doubt devil started spewing into my brain again, and I started growing doubt shoots. Doubts about all those words. A Monster Calls was good. It was really, really good. And heavy (in a deep sense, not in a weight one). Can I really write something as relevant as that? Why am I doubting my writing? Why am I dragging my feet with this story?

What am I afraid of?

I won't be able to start writing for a few days anyway, so in the small spurts of time I have until then, I've decided to absorb a little Shaun Tan. The Rabbits. Tales from Outer Suburbia. The Lost Thing. I'm hoping in the time we spend together Shaun will help me find the confidence I'm thinking must be lurking around here somewhere.

And then after that, if I've been good, I can get back to the pictures.

Surviving a weekend

So I managed to survive the SCBWI conference in Gettysburg over the weekend. Gettysburg is such a fantastic place. I'd never been there, and can't wait to go back. The history is heart-wrenching. I went on a ghost tour. I bought a bullet. I found a picture book in the same shop as the bullet only to see that it had been illustrated by someone I've admired for years. And then I met that very illustrator at the conference (more on him in another post). I cried during E.B. Lewis' keynote speech. An agent saw my portfolio and asked to meet me. What a whirlwind. So many new people, so many new friends, so much to think about.

And so much more to do.

As you can probably tell, I survived my manuscript critique with Jordan Brown (see my misgivings here in an earlier post). He was, despite my fears, terribly helpful and encouraging. I only wish I could have had a recording of everything he said because, of course, I didn't take notes. He was excited and hopeful about my book idea, which made me excited and hopeful about my book idea.

Now the uphill climb begins.

Turns out I tend to make friends easier with editors at these conferences than I do art directors and agents. Not sure why that is. The problem with that is that editors want me to write stuff (ugh!). Pictures aren't good enough; they aren't happy until they've pushed me over that ugly, word-laden hill.

So I guess I'm heading toward the next step in my children's book career. Thanks to Jordan Brown, my next move will be at my computer keyboard writing a novel.

Yes, a novel.

Apparently short stories don't have enough words. Now I have even more of those steep, torturous word-hills to climb.

Did I mention "ugh!"?

I can do this. Nobody's ever croaked from writing a novel, have they?

Someone please tell me I can do this.

More Vlad Hot Cocoa

In May I finished an illustration for a drink mix directory that was published by the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators in August. I called it Dancing in the Moonlight, and I had that old King Harvest song in my head the entire time.

(As an aside, just try and listen to that song and then get it out of your head. Not gonna happen. I had to download it.)

The illustration was part of the exhibit that PSI put together at Gallerie Chiz in Shadyside, and it will be in another exhibit starting in November at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

But I had an idea.

Next month I'm attending the Tri-Regional SCBWI conference in Gettysburg. They're going to do something called "First Looks" where illustrators send in three related images to possibly be included as part of a panel discussion. The images will be projected for everyone at the conference to see (no pressure there), and the panel (editors, agents and an art director) will offer their first responses to the images.

I really didn't have anything finished that I thought would be good enough, so I decided to create two new images to go with Dancing in the Moonlight. The images I've posted here are the sketches for those two images.

Due Nov. 1.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have some painting to do.

This should make me a happy camper

I have to admit, I haven't been creating much in the world of illustration lately. I've been focused pretty intently on getting my book out (in a few weeks, my pretties), painting a few Rots (just finished Buster on Wednesday) and getting organized for the fall SCBWI conference coming up next month in Gettysburg.

Yeah. About that conference. This year I decided to jump in the ring and get the text of a graphic novel idea I wrote a while back critiqued by one of the faculty. Our regional advisor is totally pushing me toward an editor named Jordan Brown. She says he would "love" the kind of stuff I do and she thinks we would get along "fabulously".

(By the way, where do periods fall in relation to quotation marks these days? Inside or outside?)

So I'm asking to be placed with Mr. Brown, and my fingers are kind of crossed.

Kind of.

I've been following along with Gris Grimly's blogging about the new three volume book he's been working on for the past few years. He's tackling Frankenstein and, as usual, his work is phenomenal. Beautiful. Inspiring.

Makes me want to crawl in a hole somewhere and start crocheting lap robes for a living.

His latest post isn't helping.

Turns out the editor for his Frankenstein books? Yeah. Jordan Brown. I'm torn between jumping for joy and crawling under a rock to take up residence with the isopods. If Jordan Brown has somebody like Gris Grimly in his back pocket, does somebody like me really have much of a chance?

I'm finding my rock as we speak.

Ouchy.

Giraffe polo

Here's a sketch I did between teaching classes yesterday. I had the thumbnail for this drawn over a year ago, but was afraid it wouldn't work and never pursued the idea. Looking for more portfolio pieces for the fall SCBWI conference made me revisit some old sketchbook ideas, and after I came across this one again I decided to give it a shot.

The Golden Penn

The nice people who write and edit the Western Pennsylvania Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators quarterly newsletter (called The Golden Penn) have chosen my artwork to fill the current issue. Sorry, no link directly to the newsletter, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it (you kind of have to pay for it, so they're not going to put it online). But I do have a link to their/our Web site: http://www.wpascbwi.com. And from there, here's the link to my page: http://www.wpascbwi.com/thompson_nora/thompsonn.htm. They used some of the ones with the "crazy" eyeballs (The Rots) that were mostly spring-related.

Thanks to ChrisAnn Goossen for helping me out on this one.