What the heck does an illustrator do?

Signed a Contract for a new Picture Book!!! YAY!

So a while back (last September...almost a year ago) I posted this.... http://jujubeeillustrations.blogspot.com/2012/09/submitted-dummy-waiting-game.html, talking about the WAIT after submitting a picture book and what I do while I wait. Well, yesterday I posted a review of what I did during the last month of waiting. :-) But I have great news!!!

I signed a contract for that picture book! I have to have it all finished by December 1, 2013 and it'll be out one year from now in June 2014. It's a patriotic book with a fun twist. I am VERY excited about it and can't wait to share it with you. I'll have to ask my new publisher how much I can share. :-)

Main Floor Renovation - Why I've been absent from the blog

This is my latest creative project which took 7 weeks and was only supposed to take 3-4. When we bought our house, we knew the main floor wasn't our style and that we'd renovate it someday. Well, after 8 years and a lot of planning and designing on my part, we finally bit the bullet. I am thrilled with the results.

Here is our kitchen before the remodel (well we had already taken off some drawer fronts and taken out the stove). But standard cookie cutter kitchen and plain beige everything including ceramic tile with dirty grout.

And here is the kitchen after the remodel...

new island...so much better for the work flow

We used the same cabinets but rearranged them, added 3 new ones, and put new doors and moldings on everything. (When I say we here, I mean I had the cabinet company do them.) They painted the cabinets and then added doors. The counters are quartz.

My husband and I did all the floors. They are bamboo hardwood planks, called Antique Strand Bamboo from Lumber liquidators. I personally painted all the walls on the main floor (whew!) and had fun installing all the new light fixtures and caulking the darn baseboards when we put them back on. It was all a lot of work but we are excited to have it done.

Here's the flooring...minus baseboards. The walls are Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray (but they look a little green in this light. It's really a nice warm gray. See the other pics.

moved the microwave to the new island and installed a range hood

view from the couches

The main room before the remodel

after the remodel...new pillows, flooring, rug from rugsusa.com and wall pics and ceiling lights from overstock.com

front room before

front room after...ikea rug and cube by chair

So there's what I've been doing on the side. Living without a kitchen for 7 weeks really stunk. But I'll forget it now because it's all done!

BESIDES all that I have some great news about illustrating I'll post next. Watch for it!

Wall Mural

I don't do these often...mostly painting fun designs or things on my own kid's walls every time we change their bedrooms around (see those pics here). And this is about as detailed as I got, for my boy's cowboy room way back in 2008.

But every once in a while I get a request from someone to do more of a traditional wall mural/painting. So this is what I did this week in a large basement "under the stairs" play area that the owner is turning into a little French Kitchen for her granddaughters to play in.

It's about 3.5' wide by 4' tall. A little window looking out from the patisserie over a Parisian sunset...complete with Eiffel tower (which took a very long time to paint). However, the whole thing took me about 4.5 hours total. My knees are feeling it today. I should've used one of those foam garden kneeling pads.

Anyway, It was fun to get out the acrylics and paint HUGE. I haven't done that for a LONG time and nothing really like this, ever. It really does make me want to go back to France. :-(

Not quite the sunset pictured in the mural but it felt just as romantic.

Conference for Charity called Writing for Charity

Hope to see you at the WRITING FOR CHARITY conference this Saturday, April 27th!

LIVE Manuscript Critiques by published authors!
Writing workshops!
Silent Auction!
Pick an author's brain!
Lunch provided!

All proceeds help put books in the hands of less-fortunate children.

Saturday, April 27, 2013 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Followed by Book Sale and Author Signing
Utah Valley University Sorensen Student Center, Orem, UT
(Park in the yellow student spaces in front of the Language Arts building -
No permit required. See map on the website.)

Register online if possible, or pay at the door.
For more information, visit our website:www.writingforcharity.com

A possible new venture...Stylized Kid Portraits

So I did this portrait of my kids and decided I may start offering them on a commissioned basis...maybe on Etsy or something. They'd be an 11x14 print, $200 for up to 3 kids, $50 per additional child. What do you think? Worth the price? Worth the venture?

outline

full color digital style

full color final watercolor handpainted

full color final watercolor hand painted

School Visit Demo

So today I did another school visit...I actually did two in one week. That is not usually what I do, but it just worked out that way. At today's visit, I enlisted the help of a student to video the presentation with my camera and then created this little demo so you get a small idea of what one of my general school visit consists of. This is a presentation for lower elementary grades. 4th-5th grades or Middle school age visits are much more in depth on the writing process and the illustrating process, whichever they choose. I also do presentations on developing character, making dummy books, and more.

Enjoy!

On TV again...Fun Times!

Here's a video of me on our local CBS affiliate's show "Fresh Living" once more...teaching the hosts, Casey and Debbie how to draw a penguin. See more of my how-to-draw lessons and coloring pages under the printables tab above. If you want to become an illustrator yourself, I highly recommend attending Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Conference. www.WIFYR.com

How to draw: Penguin, Puppy, Pony,...and Mouse

Today I'm appearing on my local news show, KUTV's "Fresh Living," again. (It airs at 1pm MST on channel 2). They wanted me to come back and teach a little "how-to-draw" segment. I've posted a few how-to-draw posts previously, and now I'm adding a few more to those. You can find all of my drawing printouts under the PRINTABLES tab above. Enjoy!

How to draw a face/head

People always say to me, "Oh I'm no good at drawing. I can barely even draw a stick figure." Well, just so you know, people are the hardest things to draw and if all you are trying to do is get the idea of a person across to communicate, a stick figure does it for our left brains. That's what I use in the game of pictionary just like everybody else.

People are hard to draw because we all know what they SHOULD look like. We see people every day...in the mirror or standing in front of us. Our eyes know the proportions and what goes where. So when someone draws a person incorrectly, we instinctively know.

However, EVERY person is different and has different proportions. That's what makes us all individuals. But there are a few basic rules to follow if you want to draw a general picture that resembles a non-specific person. Here are some images that you can print and use to learn the general rules (for personal use or classroom use only).

instructions on proportions of the face and head

you can print this head map to use as a tracing template when practicing your head drawings

a detailed explanation of drawing a general head

Now I need to do some Yoga

I've been drawing lots and lots of black and white yoga poses for a book. I'll post a link here when it comes out. After working all day today, I think I need to go do some yoga myself. It's such a great stress reliever. Ahhhhh....

Videos