Illustration Intensives: Intensely Beneficial

Lauren Rille 

Hi there creative friends! I was at an Illustration Intensive this last weekend, hosted by the SCBWI-San Diego Region, featuring the the insightful, and totally entertaining, Associate Art Director,  Lauren Rille, from Simon and Schuster.

(You can follow her on twitter, and if you would like a sneak peak at her design savvy, check out her blog.)

I love going to conferences, but I especially love going to illustration intensives. The purpose of an intensive is to bring you back to art school (only the knowledgeable professor is replaced with an insightful art director). The assignment is suppose to replicate what working with an art director is like.

Months before the intensive, Lauren sent us the text to a picture book. She asked us to create a thumbnail dummy  (or teeny tiny drawings that map out the pacing of the book). From those thumbnails she asked that we send her 2 roughs (or more finished drawings) of the spreads that we wanted to illustrate. Once we turned those in, she would email us a critique. We were to bring the revised thumbnails and 2 final spreads to the intensive, to be critiqued as a group.

The text we got was a sweet and very young picture book called Baby Love by Angela DiTerlizzi and illustrated by fellow Mentee Brooke Boynton Hughes. I'll be honest, I pulled a few hairs out trying to think how I could illustrate the text differently, especially since Brooke did such a gobsmacklingly wonderful job.


After drawing what seemed like a million and two families with babies, I finally decided to put this family in space... going on a spacewalk, with them bringing their baby home to sleep at their colony on Mars. (Everything is better in space, right?! ;)

Here's what I sent in:

Stick figures in.... SPAAAAACE!!!

This is one of the roughs I sent in. (I do my roughs... extra rough.)

Doesn't this sweet face make you weep?!

Lauren responded with a very helpful critique. She mentioned one reason she had prompted our group with this particular text was because babies are so hard to illustrate; people often get the proportions wrong. So I decided to do some more "research" on babies and ended up waxing nostalgic, thinking of my kid's infancy. Something that I noticed is the lack of neck and the adorable potbelly. Lauren also said babies barely have any eyebrows or eyelashes.

So armed with a refreshed knowledge that babies are not  just miniature adults, I went back to the drawing board and sketched another million babies. 

I redid my thumbnails and revised my roughs.

My sketches are starting to get tighter here. 

Next, I scanned my drawings in, printed them out on Arches 140lb, and painted with watercolor. 

Then I scanned the watercolor in and painted in some digital layers.

Finally, after all our blood, sweat, and tears, we went to the intensive, and had our illustrations critiqued. This is what I submitted:

(You can click on them, to see closer,  if you have ancient eyes like me.) 

If you are not already a believer, I strongly urge you to start doing illustration intensives. (You can check out if there are any intensives in your neck of the woods here.) I've been to many of them in different regions, and I've always learned something about myself as an artist, or about how art directors interact with illustrators, or even whether or not my style is right for that particular art director or publishing house. You have nothing to loose and everything to gain.

Alrighty friends, thanks for dropping by and happy illustrating!

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Interview by Meridth McKean Gimbel, a kidlit writer, artist, & champion taco cruncher who is currently building a time machine. They are also represented by Linda Pratt at Wernick & Pratt. You can follow their work at:

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Favorite things...

I'm always interested to learn what supplies other illustrators swear by.  Sometimes seeing someone else's tried and tested tools inspires me to try something new.  So, I thought I'd show you my favorite supplies for drawing, inking, and painting.

For drawing & inking:

-My favorite pencils are Faber Castell 9000 in HB.  I'm sure there are nicer pencils out there (some of my grad school friends swore by these Tombow pencils, and I know lots of illustrators who love the Blackwing), but for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, I'm partial to Faber Castell.

-I've had my Alvin Glass Inkwell sharpener for about ten years and it's still going strong.

-I usually buy whichever kneaded eraser happens to be on sale, but I'm sort of partial to this one.

-My trusty green tape measure has been in my life for a long time and I sort of feel weirdly attached to it.  I use it to measure out the size of each illustration onto my paper and while I've used other tape measures none of them has been quite as comforting as Little Green.  Also, I'm pretty sure Little Green is instilled with luckiness, which is maybe why I'm so fond of her.  (Do you have superstitious attachment to any of your supplies?)

-My ink of choice is FW acrylic ink.  It comes in lots of different colors (I mostly use sepia and occasionally white) and I like its fluidity.  I pour the ink into a wide mouth, tight sealing container, so it's easier to dip my pen into.  Also, if I want to thicken the ink slightly I leave the lid of the ink container open for awhile (overnight), and alternatively, to thin the ink I just add a little water.  Once acrylic ink is completely dry it's water fast which means that my watercolor paint doesn't affect my ink lines.

-I've experimented with lots of different pens and the one that works best for me is the Speedball Standard Pen Holder with a #512 nib.  I think pens and different pen nibs are highly personal and if you're interested in using a dip pen I encourage you to experiment with as many nibs as possible until you find one that suits you.

For painting:

-My favorite brushes are short-handled round brushes.  Investing in a good quality large brush for big, loose washes was sort of life changing.  Adding a good wash brush to my arsenal made covering large areas of paper (for sky, water, etc) suddenly fun and free instead of terrifying.  For the rest of my painting I use Winsor & Newton Cotman round brushes in sizes 3, 5, and 10.

-For watercolor paints I prefer Holbein and Winsor & Newton Professional grade.  My color palette varies a bit from image to image, but the colors pictured above are the ones I use most often.

-I've had my paint palette for a long time and by now it feels like an old friend. Here's one that's similar.

-It isn't included in the photo, but I also rely heavily on Scmincke masking fluid.  Its squeeze tube makes applying it fairly easy, and as long as you remove it gently and within 24 hours of application it comes off easily and without damaging the paper.  (I use the colorless version.)

-I always have two jars of water while I'm painting and I change the water often (pretty much anytime I switch to a new color) to keep my colors from becoming muddy.  I also keep a roll of paper towels at hand and use a paper towel to soak excess paint off my brush or from the paper.

Paper and preparation:

-My paper of choice is Arches 140 lb. hot press in bright white.  Although, lately I've been experimenting with other brands and with cold press papers.  (Hot press paper has a smoother finish and cold press papers are more textured.)

-In order to achieve a stable surface that won't buckle under very wet watercolor washes I stretch my watercolor paper by soaking it in water and then stapling it onto 1/2 inch Gatorfoam Board.  I used to use plywood, but I prefer gator board because it's light weight but sturdy.  (Usually a single row of staples is sufficient, but because I live in the very dry Colorado mountains I use a double row of staples on large paintings otherwise the paper dries so tightly that the staples pull out.)

-A note about stretching paper:  I stretch my paper AFTER I've drawn and inked my image.  As mentioned above, once the acrylic ink is dry it doesn't budge so there's no danger in soaking my inked drawings.  Stretching seems to slightly change the texture of the paper which makes the ink lines a bit more difficult to apply, which is why I stretch the paper after the drawing is complete.

Additional Miscellaneous supplies:

-I'm a huge fan of post-it notes and use them for to-do lists, to keep track of deadlines, and to put notes about illustrations on my drawing table.

-I use masking tape and bull dog clips to attach reference material to my drawing table.

-Plastic containers make for handy storage of paints and other supplies.

-I use the occasional colored pencil and love experimenting with water-soluble graphite.


I hope you found some inspiration here!  I'd love to hear about your favorite supplies!

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Brooke Boynton Hughes lives in Colorado's Rocky Mountains where she illustrates children's books.  To see more of her work please visit www.BrookeBoyntonHughes.com

Interview with new SCBWI Illustration Mentee, Brooke Boynton Hughes - by Jen Betton

Brooke Boynton Hughes was the recipient of the SCBWI Mentorship Award at the 2013 Summer Conference. Kidlit Artists would like to officially welcome Brooke to the blog, and ask her a few questions about the Mentorship experience and about what she is up to these days.

Kidlit Artists: Getting such specific and direct feedback on your work, did you find the experience enlightening? Affirming? Confusing? Conflicting? Why?

Brooke: I found the feedback I received to be both enlightening and affirming.  All of the mentors zeroed in on two main weaknesses in my work, which made it very clear what I need to focus on moving forward.

Each of the mentors talked about my timidity with shadows and the need to improve my use of both light and shadow to ground my characters in their settings.  Everyone also talked about my character's faces being generic and interchangeable.  One mentor noted that if you removed the hair from my characters, many of them would more or less look the same, which I thought was a really helpful point.  Since the conference, I've been working on drawing more unique and interesting faces.

I also came away from the critiques knowing that I need to do more life drawing.  In grad school I spent two years drawing the figure from life, but somehow, once I was finished with school I fell out of the habit of life drawing.  I'm excited to start drawing from observation again.

One mentor remembered my work from last year's conference and noticed that I've been working on painting more loosely and that this has improved my work.

Kidlit Artists: What kind of projects are you working on now?

Brooke: Right now I'm working on my first two books, a middle grade book for Disney/Hyperion, called "Cupcake Cousins", written by Kate Hannigan and a picture book for Beach Lane Books, called "Baby Love", which is written by Angela DiTerlizzi.  Working on my first books has been really exciting!  Next year I'll be doing a picture book for Random House, written by Linda Ashman, called "MORE!".  The manuscript for this story is really lively and fun and I can't wait to get started. 

I'm also working on revisions to a picture book dummy, as well as working on manuscripts for two different picture book ideas.

Kidlit Artists: Is there one really helpful piece of advice that you've gotten since pursuing illustration? Any one piece of horrible advice?

Brooke: Several years ago at the SCBWI L.A. Summer Conference I received a portfolio critique from Marla Frazee.  This was the first time that I had my portfolio reviewed by a professional illustrator and Marla's advice was extraordinarily helpful.  The main thing that stuck with me was that she told my to keep going.  She said that I was on the right track and that I just needed to keep pushing ahead.  That piece of advice came at a time when I really needed to hear it and I feel so grateful to have had such a thoughtful and encouraging critique of my work.

Kidlit Artists: Last, please tell us where we can find you online.

Brooke: You can find me online at www.BrookeBoyntonHughes.com, where there is a link to my blog.  You can also find me on twitter, @BrookeBHughes.   

Kidlit Artists: Thank you Brooke!