Saturday, January 23, 2010

The Big Sneeze


A birthday party with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs... this was the theme that was assigned for a workshop at the SCBWI conference in New York City this coming Friday. Each illustrator was asked to decide who the party would be for (Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, etc.) and our illustrations would all have a different emotional tone, depending on the character we chose.

I wanted it to be an original idea and present it in a unique way, and I wanted it to be... extremely impressive! But my mind was a blank. Luckily I had about four days of being snowed in during the Christmas Blizzard 09' to think about it- and since one of my gifts was a new sketchbook, I put it to use right away jotting down any ideas that came to mind.

I went through each character and imagined what their party would look like, and wanted to choose the one that I thought had the most interesting scenario. I knew that I also wanted my illustration to have action (the words from Walt Stanchfield's book Drawn to Life were ringing in my ears- "Draw Verbs".) I landed on Sneezy, and once the little light bulb popped on over my head and I had my idea, I grabbed my sketchbook and jotted it down as quickly as I could. This is what it looked like... I don't know if anybody else would be able to make this out, but I knew exactly what it was and I guess that's the important part!



I'm looking forward to the conference and to see what my fellow children's illustrators have dreamed up!

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