lyon_martin

Visit this blog for the first post of a series featuring A Journey Round My Skull’s recently-acquired collection of Soviet children’s books from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I believe searching (and viewing) as many examples of other artists’ work as possible is a great way to improve your own work.

While my own work is focused on children’s art right now, I don’t limit my viewing to the genre. I visit fantasy artists’ sites as well as studying my favorite grand masters. I am often guilty of buying “just one more” art reference book far too often.

This week, because childrensillustrators.com is, sadly, still off-line because of a malicious attack, I went out into the wilds of the World Wide Web in search of contemporary picture book artists.

I consider myself a pretty patient person and often I am willing to wait for a page to load when it’s taking a longer than average amount of time. But, I’ve got to tell you some of the sites I tried to visit were too hard to see.

Fellow illustrators, please, if you want art directors or other possible clients to view your work and hire you, make your site easy to view. If you aren’t technically inclined ask a friend or aquaintence who is to help you minimize the load time of your images. When you load your site and open it to viewing by the public, check and see if it takes too long to load. Ask people you know to go to the site and tell you honestly what they think about it. Ask them if they could see the art. Ask them if it took a long time to load. If an art director or potential client has to wait too long for an image to load or can’t figure out how to view your images, they will go on to the next illustrator’s site and forget about you.

I’d like to say this was only in isolated instances, but it was every third or fourth site. That’s a lot of artists who are minimizing their chances for paying work.

Originally published at Daily Art Food. You can comment here or there.

walkwrite

Well folks, wrapping up the blog tour year is rhondastapleton !

Rhonda Stapleton started writing a few years ago to appease the voices in her head. She has a Master’s degree in English and a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. Rhonda works as an editor for a legal publishing company and enjoys offering editing workshops. Rhonda lives in Northeast Ohio with her lovely, energetic family, who are more than enough to keep her busy when she’s not writing.

In the twelve minutes of free time she has each day, Rhonda enjoys reading, photography, writing poetry, singing in the shower (and in the car, at work, or basically anywhere that provides oxygen), drinking chai tea, and playing on the Internet.

Felicity Walker believes in true love. That’s why she applies for a gig at the matchmaking company Cupid’s Hollow. But when Felicity gets the job, she learns that she isn’t just a matchmaker…she’s a cupid! (There’s more than one of them, you know.)

Armed with a hot pink, tricked-out PDA infused with the latest in cupid magic (love arrows shot through email), Felicity works to meet her quota of successful matches. But when she bends the rules of cupidity by matching her best friend Maya with three different boys at once, disaster strikes. Felicity needs to come up with a plan to set it all right, pronto, before she gets fired…and before Maya ends up with her heart split in three.


Here we go for the last time!

1. If you had a time machine and could go back to the early days of your writing career and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Ooooooh hard question! Maybe it would be to stop waffling around so much and just finish the darn book. haha

2. If you weren't a writer, what would you want to be (or what do you think you would be), career-wise?

I'd totally love to be a lounge singer. It would be awesome.

3. What did you do to celebrate your book deal? Pop some champagne? Extravangant purchase? Dinner out? Pizza delivery?

My plan is to hit every bookstore in the area. And also to do something super-delish for dinner!! Maybe even get a massage. Ooooh!

A lounge singer would be so fun! I'd come to watch you for sure, Rhonda. Thanks for stopping by!


Learn more about Rhonda Stapleton here.

Order Stupid Cupid here or here.

Thanks for coming along for the ride, everyone. It's been a great year, and I'm so proud of all the Debs!

Happy Holidays!!

edit_anon

http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/12/last-minute-miscellany.html

Question: Is it better to be published by a small independent (real) publisher with little to no physical distribution (POD/ebook) or remain unpublished, at least for the short term?

When it comes to an author/illustrator's dummies, should they be full-sized? I've searched for an answer online and have found several conflicting answers. Some people claim they absolutely have to be full size while others insist they just need to be big enough to be readable. As someone preparing their first complete package to send into the dreaded slush, I'd like to be as accurate as possible. I don't want something as simple as the size of my dummy derailing my chances.

Suppose a book has not been picked up nationally by Barnes & Noble. But then people start saying that they've seen it on the shelf at their local Barnes & Noble. What does this mean? Has the manager special ordered it, and if so, why? (Reviews? Strong indie sales? or what?)

What does one do after making a terminally stupid mistake with a well-known editor, which has most likely resulted in blackballing by the entire industry? Is there any way for the repentant author (and also very talented, I offer, as one of said author's readers) to redeem his- or herself? Does he or she have a chance to be read and loved by an editor, or would it be better to find some other trade...say, fishmongering?

kimmiepoppins

• 17:52 Note to Self: distractible people should not be allowed to bake cookies. Santa...put a timer on that list...the microwave is NOT PORTABLE! #