I'm a Picture Book Academy Graduate!

Today was the last day of an amazing online course called "The Craft and Business of Writing Children’s Picture Books," taught by the marvelous Mira Reisberg of The Picture Book Academy.

I actually wrote my first picture book manuscript! I've had the idea incubating in my noggin for years, and this class pushed me to actually write it! This will be my 3rd year to participate in PiBoIdMo, but I've never had the confidence to flush any of my ideas into an actual story until now.

If you're into kidlit in any way, I highly recommend her classes. She is an artist, writer, picture book scholar (she even has a PhD!) and has recently started her own literary agency where she works as an agent. She teaches all that stuff. . she knows a lot! And she is loads of fun. I'm going to miss the class, but I have met a great group of writers with which I plan to stay in touch.

Thank you Mira for this wonderful experience! In the words of Bruno Mars: "You're amazing..."

Great Resource About Commissioning Illustrations

There are a lot little intricacies about copyright law pertaining to illustration that are commonly misunderstood – mainly that the producer of the book needs to buy all rights to the art in order for it to be included in a book. I talk more about that in my post titled "Authors Who Plan to Self Publish – You Don't Need All Illustration Rights!"

I've found a great resource that I think anyone who works in the publishing business should read. If you are an illustrator, please read this, too. The more knowledgeable all of us are, the easier it will be to maybe get what our work is worth! It's a booklet written by illustrator Randy Gallegos and can be downloaded for free on Randy's blog.

Thanks Randy for this great resource!

Will Terry's "How To Design A Drawing"

I'm so excited to have won a free copy of Will Terry's "How To Design A Drawing" video tutorial. Even though I've been a graphic designer my whole life, I still struggle with integrating characters into backgrounds in my illustrations, and I'm sure this will help me with that.

Having been taught by Will for a week at the Writing and Illustrating For Young Readers Conference in 2009, I know I will come away with some great insights. I love the way Will teaches - he just talks about different aspects of illustration based on his experiences - not some hard and fast rules read out of a textbook.

Check out his tutorials - he has a new series of 8 videos. You can find them on folioacademy.com I'll let you know how it goes - but I'm sure I'll learn a lot from it!

Create Your Own Newspaper from Your Twitter Lists with paper.li

I just discovered paper.li. You can use one of your Twitter lists (or your whole feed) to create a newspaper of all the stories mentioned from your feed in the last 24 hours. I think it's so cool! I'm following so many different types of people that it's impossible not to miss anything. This way, it's all organized in a newspaper format for me to read every morning. I do miss reading a newspaper. And you can read other people's papers, as well.

I have three papers so far:
"The Redheaded Stepchild Daily" – updates from me and everyone I follow
"Red’s Illustration Inspiration Daily" – updates from my illustration-related tweeps
"Red’s Biz Motivation/Inspiration Daily" – updates from my business/entrepreneur tweeps

You are welcome to subscribe to my papers, and create your own! I just had to tell everyone about this cool service!

New Halloween Designs on my Pingg Page

I added two more designs to my Pingg page. If you plan on having a Halloween party or get together, you can use these for free!

12 Week Challenge

Getting geared up for the 12 Week Challenge over at Zero 2 Illo. It starts on Monday, April 5 and I'm hoping it will help me get my illustration career going. Here is what Jonathan says about it:

The 12 Week Challenge is an opportunity to make amazing progress towards your goal of becoming a full time professional illustrator. But this time you won’t be alone.

Here are a few things we hope to achieve with the 12 Week Challenge:

• Life-changing progress for as many participants as possible
• Community spirit and a collaborative effort to get “there”
• A platform and spotlight for those on the journey

Please join us!

Help for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

I'm back from a self-imposed break because I've been suffering from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome for a while now. I'm on the computer all day at work, then come home to blog and read others' and I just had to make myself cut back until I healed. I just want to spread the word about this wonderful book that helped me! After going to a neurologist to diagnose my problem (I was tested by having shocks sent through my arm, then a needle was inserted, and then they moved around my wrist to see if it hurt. Umm - YEAH IT HURT!) The doctor said, yep, it's carpal tunnel and started to leave. I had to keep asking questions about what I should or shouldn't do. She said if it doesn't get better, she'd have to operate. And the only thing she came up with is to wear a wrist brace while I worked and slept. $300 out of my pocket for what??
Luckily for me, a trainer at the gym suggested I do some exercises out of this book. And after suffering for months and months, the pain went away in about 2 weeks. The author Pete Egoscue is a physical therapist, and what he says makes so much sense! Wearing the brace probably made my condition worse, because it restricted my movement too much. Our bodies are MADE to do repetitive motions, the problem is the sitting and not moving our bodies. He also said that if you get operated on (unless you have an injury - not just pain like mine) that it would probably mess you up for life -because you'll keep doing the things that caused it in the first place. And the cause isn't just using the computer - it's the way our bodies get out of alignment and our posture suffers from sitting at a desk all the time. I have really bad posture!
Anyway, if anyone is suffering from pain or numbness, get this book before wasting any time and money at the doctor's. They know nothing about prevention - just how to fix a symptom of a problem, not the root cause. Okay, I'm off my soapbox now - back to art. (I had to curtail that, too, because while drawing, my whole arm would be totally numb!) I'll be posting a project I'm working on soon.