by akikowhite

Tomie dePaola Entry Process of Art

A wonderful person, Diandra May, Illustrator Coordinator for the Houston area SCBWI has made a blog with many of the art that was entered into the Tomie dePaola illustrator’s competition. There are many talented people in this group. Please have a look. http://scbwicontest.blogspot.com/

Here is my entry, imagery straight from my own farm! With a little exaggeration.
Below is a little bit about how this image came about.
Photo I used for reference. This is exactly what I saw out my window as I painted the Chicken Licken. I could just see the chickens and ducks all getting together and squawking about the sky falling on them.

Using my own ducky lucky as reference. I couldn’t get her to do what I wanted so I helped her out a little by holding out her wings. Ducks are so funny looking!

Just had to add this one because I think ducks look so odd when you look at them face on!
Here is the sketch that I drew before adding her to the final image.
The original sketch.
I changed the direction of the duck after seeing the placement of the other animals. Also notice that I moved the dog house over a bit in photoshop before I transferred it to the canvas. I had originally thought it would be fun to have a remote control helicopter be the acorn that hits Chicken Licken in the image,  but as an image with out more story, it didn’t make sense. This idea come from my son who had recently flown his helicopter into one of our oak trees. I think it may have gone through a few rainstorms before they were able to take it down.
I love my farm. 

Cardinal

Happy New Year 2012!
Okay, So I’ve already broken one new year’s resolution…to post more often to my blog…You would think  I could have honored that for at least 24 hours. Well here’s one post and a painting to go with it.

For Christmas this year I thought it would be nice to honor my husband’s grandfather “Gramps”
When he past away the family saw many red cardinals that day. So from then on every time we see a cardinal we say gramps has come for a visit. I never got the privalege to meet him, but I am sure he was a wonderful man.

Tomie dePaola Entry

CHICKEN LICKEN



I’ve been busy painting an image for the Tomie dePaola Illustration Competition through the SCBWI. He picks an excerpt from a children’s book story and illustrators from all over the world submit their entry. There will be a blog set up soon to view all the beautiful artwork. I will post it as soon as it is available to view.


Here is the excerpt:

So they went along and went along until they met Turkey Lurkey.
“Good morning, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Daddles, Cocky Locky, Henny Penny,
and Chicken Licken,” said Turkey Lurkey, “Where are you going?”
“Oh, Turkey Lurkey, the sky is falling and we are going to tell the King!”
“How do you know the sky is falling?” asked Turkey Lurkey.
“Ducky Daddles told me,” said Goosey Loosey.
“Cocky Locky told me,” said Ducky Daddles.
“Henny Penny told me,” said Cocky Locky.
“Chicken Licken told me,” said Henny Penny
“I saw it with my own eyes, I heard it with my own ears,
and a piece of it fell on my tail!” said Chicken Licken.
“Then I will go with you,” said Turkey Lurkey, “and we will tell the King!”

Turkey Day

Happy Holidays!
This is a painting of a turkey that we saw at a farm near our home. The feathers were a lot of fun to create with the palette knife. It did take me longer than usual to get the correct texture and movement with the knife, but I think it was a success. This painting is hanging in the Huisache Grill in New Braunfels.
I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 
Thanks for enjoying my artwork!

SCBWI_SWTX Ilustrator’s day at the San Antonio Zoo!

I am the Illustrator Coordinator for the the Southwest Texas society of children’s book writers and illustrators. We held a sketch crawl at the San Antonio Zoo. We spent the morning sketching all the different kinds of animals. Here a few highlights from our day.

(L to R) Illustrators: Akiko White, Leticia Rocha, Catherine Garant and Jeff McDaniel
Taking a break, watching the Hippos
Me.
Here are some of my sketches

And a few more
Lety
Lety’s Sketches
Catherine
Cathrine’s Sketches
Jeff
Jeff’s Sketches

The highlight of the day was having our picture taken with an aspiring artist!

ASBA-Show this Weekend!

Come and join me and several other bovine artist for a paint out! The American Society Of Bovine Artist Show in Gruene, Texas this Saturday and Sunday, October 22-23. We will be on the grounds of Cactus Jacks in Gruene. Check out my new painting just for the show!

Bovine Buddies. 60″ x 48″ for sale at Cactus Jacks
This is a painting of our neighbor’s bulls. Big Head and Alamo. They were so fun to see everyday as I drove by their pasture. Big head was approx 11 1/2 years old, and about 2,300 pounds….a Big boy. Our neighbor Ron had him for about 9 years and would spend many sunsets afternoons in the pasture sitting on Big Heads back. Big head passed away a year ago and was buried in Ron’s back pasture. After Big head’s passing, Alamo was distraught, so Ron found him a new home with a nice herd to call his own.


Here is the photo’s that I used to paint this painting. In the original photo Alamo had his head on the ground. I used photoshop to put his head upright and then used that photo as my reference.

 Original Photo
Alamo alone 
Photoshop image for reference 

Photoshop is a great tool. As you can see there is still a small part of the original horn from Alamo in the photo. I didn’t feel it was necessary to spend too much time cleaning up this reference photo since it was just for my own use.

Maybe sometime I will be able to put on a photoshop workshop through our SCBWI-SWTX group.

SCBWI-SWTX Conference

Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators South West Texas Conference 2011

 

 

I wanted to share a bit of information from the SCBWI-SWTX (society of children book writers and illustrators southwest Texas region) conference that I attended recently. It was a great event with many informational speakers. I really want to thank the staff for putting it all together so well!

Me with some of our wonderful board members
 

 

I sketched a few of the speakers as they were sharing their secrets.



The first faculty member was Andrea Welch of Beach Lane Press (Simon and Schuster) She had very good advice for writers and illustrators. Andrea loves good rhyming stories and manuscripts that engage the reader. The content of a book should be emotionally giving but not sappy. A flawed characters is an interesting one. And a story should be one that you want to read over and over again. A writer or illustrator should have creative passion and an intense personal connection to a project for it to be successful.



Kristen Daly Rens from Balzer and Bray (Harper Collins) said “Open with a bang!” In your stories you should make every scene keep the story moving, every scene should keep the tension rising and things should have changed with-in the story. What really works in a story is the combination of an action plot (external action) and an emotional plot (internal action). By the closing of the story the main character should have had some personal growth.





Diane Gonzales Bertrand (writer and professor) said “to be a good writing teacher you must be a writer yourself” She always wrote as a child and later realized that she was good at it. Diane writes from her memories and shares her experience with young students. She states that we should all jump the fence and run into the open spaces and see what happens. If you receive rejection it is not the end but just another beginning. 



The SWTX-SCBWI September conference brought new light to the digital marketing possibilities for all Illustrators and writers. 
 
 
Richard Dean Johnson of Interact Books shared information on how to publish an interactive ebook for children. His company has developed a user friendly program that can help writers and illustrators turn there own publications into an electronic book. These books can be created to have movement and music within the stories pages. Interact Book’s app  allows children to purchase books at a minimal cost and create their own library to play with. What a great new way for us to market our published and unpublished works.
 
 
Kim Murray of Piccolo Media discussed how to market through social media. Such tools as Websites, Blogs, Facebook and Twitter are some of the social media sites that were brought up in her workshop . Being social and engaged can make your brand more marketable. It is necessary in this electronic age to make a presence on the web. Kim has great knowledge about how to get your brand noticed and how to make social media a weekly if not daily exercise in your business routine.
 
Hope all of you who are interested in children’s book writing and illustrating can join us next year for our conference. 
 
Here are some local conferences that are happening in the near future:
 
October 1, 2011 (my b-day yeah!)
Free event
The Palmer Events Center
900 Barton Springs Rd. 
Austin, TX 78704
 
October 22-23, 2011 Same weekend as my Bovine Festival, but maybe I can sneak away!
(Meet Alton Brown, Paula Dean and many other celebs!)
State Capital
Austin, Texas
 
February 17-19, 2012
Ragsdale Center
Austin, TX
 
April 9, 2012
Merrell Center
6301 S. Stadium Lane
Katy, TX 77494

Artisan Akiko in Gruene, Texas

I am very excited to share that my artwork will be showcased at Huisach Grill in New Braunsfels this next month and also my paintings will be carried at Cactus Jacks in Gruene, TX. For those of you who don’t know, Gruene is a small town within the city of New Braunsfels. Lots of fun things to see and do there. The legendary Greune Hall is also there. If you are ever in the Texas Hill Country, make sure you mosey on down to Gruene, Texas!

On October 22-23 Cactus Jacks will host the American Society of Bovine Artist annual showcase. Come on down and watch me paint. If you are into clay art this is the same weekend as the Texas Clay Festival. There will be an abundance of talented artist to see on that weekend!

The American Society of Bovine Artist  is an association that I have recently joined. I didn’t realize how many cows I had painted until I joined this group. Looking forward to painting more soon!

This is a very large painting that I did for a children’s book idea that I have. 
Hope to see you in October!

SCBWI-Conference

I am so glad to be back home from our 4500 mile trip across the western states! We went to Carlsbad Caverns, Disney, California Coastline, LA, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon. What a memorable trip!

As some of you know I am working on illustration and writing children’s books along with my painting career. During our road trip, I attended a conference for children’s book writers and illustrators. Here are some of what I would like to share from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in LA. It was their 40th year for this conference. I met so many incredible writer’s and illustrators at the conference. My head is still spinning. Here is the link to the blog if you would like to hear more of what I learned. http://scbwiconference.blogspot.com/ 

Lisa Medway, Me and Jerry Bennett

I made some best friends also while I was there. Lisa Medway and Jerry Bennett were first time attendees also. Lisa is a professor and a writer. Jerry is an illustrator and the Illustrator Coordinator for the OK-SCBWI. At the 2011 Golden Kite Awards Luncheon, other attendees at our table asked how long we had known each other. We all said, “Only 3 days!” I guess we are kindred spirits, because it felt like we had known each other for much, much longer!

The first speakers that I met were Pat Cummings is and Illustrator, Writer and Instructor at Parsons. Priscilla Burris is the National Illustrator Coordinator for the SCBWI. They both were a wealth of information. Both of them had some great advice; make your characters charming and memorable, send new postcards with your name on the front every 3-4 months and never send the same image to the same person twice. These are things that I will keep in mind as I search for my own “Editor Soulmate”.

We all loved hearing the keynote from Libba Bray Author of Going Bovine and Beauty Queens. She is a interesting character, I am sure her books are quite interesting. I bought one for her to sign. A quote from Libba, “We are our stories, successful stories will come from ourselves. Be true to yourself.”

Paul O. Zelinsky

Paul drew Emma a Hello Kitty version of Rupelstiltskin.

Paul O. Zelinsky has illustrated some beautiful books. One being the book Rumplestiltskin. His advice, “research all possibilities and find the right person for your character.”

Sarah Stewart and David Small

Another Keynote speaker was David Small. He has several Picture books and a new graphic novel out called Stitches. What I really enjoyed was meeting his delightful wife Sarah Stewart when I was getting David’s autograph. She is a wonderful soul with an amazing outlook on life.

Our surprise speaker was none other than Judy Bloom of the Judy Moody book series. It was a delight to hear about how she became a writer/illustrator. She was a mother and had done everything right. She had raised her kids, been a good wife and paid her taxes, but felt there was something missing in her life, that is when she began to write. Judy, I can relate!

Jon Sciezska

Other speakers that I had the privilege to hear where Laurent Linn; Art Director most notable for his career designing puppets for Jim Hensen’s studio, Gary Paulson; author of Hatchet, Jon Sciezska;  author of Space Heads, Steve Malik; writer and illustrator agent, Martha Rago; Associate Creative Director for HarperCollins and Richard Peck; professor and writer of many books.

Emma with Jerry Pinkney

Even though I missed hearing Jerry Pickney‘s speech, Emma and I did get his autograph. He even drew a little mouse next to his autograph. I’m beginning to think it is better to be a little person when getting autograph from writer’s and illustrators. Jerry has been illustrating for over 40 years. His images are beautiful.

Mary Pope Osborne

Mary Pope Osborn was missed also, but I got her autograph for my little girl. She is the author for the Magic Tree House series. All my three children have enjoyed her books. How wonderful to have gotten to meet her. She also autographed a book for my daughter’s preschool teacher thanking her for sharing her books with her class. What a nice lady!

Last but not least, I put my portfolio in the showcase. There were 1500 at the conference, 200+ Illustrators, and 180 showed in the showcase. I am glad that a few people picked up my promotional cards.

What I learned from this conference is that I will have to go above and beyond to get noticed. I am a little neurotic when it comes to my work so I should do fine. I am looking forward to giving it my best and making connections in the children’s book industry. It was an amazing experience that I will never forget. Can’t wait for the next conference!


I will close with a quote from Richard Peck, “Unless you find yourself on the page very early in life, you will spend your life looking for yourself in all the wrong places.”