Archive for December, 2007

Just a quick note to let you all know that I’m back from my Christmas break and will be posting again very soon! I miss illustrating and can’t wait to get back into the swing of things :o)

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday break and I wish you all the best for the coming New Year!

Hope you all have a very wonderful and meaningful holiday with all your friends and family! I won’t be posting too much in the next couple weeks as I’ll be on vacation. See you in the New Year!

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This little guy isn’t ready for bed! Click here to rate this illustration.

1. Your best possible work. Don’t include work just for quantity sake - make sure each piece you include is at your highest standard. Most people recommend you include 10-15 pieces.
2. A unique illustration style that draws you out from the crowd. There are SO many children’s illustrators out there that it’s important to have a unique style or approach that will help potential clients remember you. Differentiate yourself in a manner that is comfortable and natural.

3. Children with different expressions, moods, movements, interacting with other children.

4. Children in different settings. These settings can include children at school, on the playground, at home, at a pool party, and the list goes on!

5. Children of different ages along with parents, grandparents, teachers, etc.

6. Children of different ethnicities.

7. Animals.

8. Illustrations of different sizes and compositions. Be able to demonstrate your ability to work your illustrations into a book layout or a magazine article. Having examples of two page spreads or spot illustrations are important to emphasize your understanding of composition and design.

9. A series of illustrations with the same characters carried throughout. You may be able to draw an expressive, wonderfully charming character the first time, but being able to repeat this character many times is an important skill for picture books.

10. A business card and take-away samples of your work. Make sure both these items are reflective of your style as an illustrator in both design and format.

I’d love to know if you have more you’d add to the list!

Love to hear you thoughts on my work! Feel free to comment or click here to rate this illustration. :)

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Love is in the air! It’s Christmastime! :) Click here to rate this illustration.

Haha, ok sorry for the dramatic headline… but this is pretty cool stuff!

I want to give you a brief overview of RSS and how it can transform the way you read your favorite blogs! You may have visited my site and noticed the RSS icon located in the top left. You may have also noticed a similar icon on other blogs you visit (often to the right of the browser’s URL field). RSS allows you to read all your favorite blogs from one place. The RSS Reader will check each of you favorite blogs (approx. every 30min) and will update your reader with all the new posts from your favorite blogs- without you having to lift a finger!

I’ve illustrated a diagram below that explains how the setup will work:

The first thing you’ll need to do to take advantage of RSS, is to set up an account with an RSS Reader. I use Google Reader. There are several other online RSS readers, as well as desktop programs that you can use. After setting up an account, you’ll need to visit your favorite blogs and click on the RSS icon. Once you click on the icon, you’ll be able to add that blog to your reader and voila!

Now you only have to check your reader for updates from your favorite blogs - you only have one place to visit instead of many! I still like to visit blogs directly, but having Google Reader allows me to stay up to date with so many more blogs than I’d be able to without it! I’ve subscribed to over 200 blogs, and it would be way too difficult to access them each individually everyday. Google Reader immediately shows me which ones have been updated and I can read them all right there - a life changing program if you ask me! :)

For an excellent explanation of RSS and how it works, you can also visit this link.

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