Hi, all! I'm in the ideation phase of RABBIT ROAD RACE, and just wanted to make doubly sure I understand what "road race" means.

The Collins dictionary defines it as; A race on public roads, such as motor racing, cycle racing, athletics, etc. Other internet sources also confirm it's any (mostly motorsport) race held on a public road or a closed course designed to simulate public roads.

All this to say, does this mean I can't draw, say, go-karts or any vehicles racing on a race track? Like, if I want to use go-karts, they need to be racing through the city streets? I don't want to be disqualified on a technicality, haha. Maybe I'm overthinking this...

@Lee-White great insight thank you for sharing you thoughts on this.

@Melissa_Bailey You are so helpful Melissa.

@Valerie-Light I really like the composition where the child character is being pulled - I think you could have a lot of fun with the poses in that one.

@Lee-White Thanks so much Lee for taking the time to respond! Your advice is much appreciated always 🙂 So maybe a mixed media type of paper works best for that approach? I'm thinking rather than a hot or cold press watercolor paper (which is what I use now with watercolor pencils).

I've never approached the pan pastels, but I think I'll have to now! And thanks for sharing your work, its great to see pieces you did as a student while I learn from you guys.

@AngelinaKizz @patricialamas Yes and the more you can print and produce the cards yourself the higher your profit!

@Michael-Angelo-Go An agency has no say and no preference in the size of your files. They're just relaying the specs their clients want, and as you know they're all different. You will likely have to resize files down to 300 dpi most often, and may lose detail then.

@LauraA sounds exciting. I hope u have a great time.

@lpetiti I'm chiming in to say that I was also really taken with Mesa's interview. I looked up up on Instagram, and thanked her for sharing her perspective.

She directed me to look at http://www.medillsb.com/ to browse public portfolios of other Scientific Illustrators. Check it out if you haven't already!

https://forum.svslearn.com/topic/12645/svs-virtual-studio-may-2022/8 @chrisaakins was it this one or do you mean the finished storm thread? Oh nevermind I missed the “entry” on your post. I haven’t seen the may storm thread yet.

@AlliFaith Yes, a super-charged illustrator.

Hey Pam! I like where this is headed and I think you've got a great start with this rough sketch. Here are my inital thoughts: the TV was reading more like a window to me so I changed that a bit - I think it'd be nice to see more of what's happening on the screen and I think it's not a bad idea to have it on a table to prevent it from looking like a window. My other notes are to maybe try to push the pose a little bit more and to keep working on that frightened expression. Can't wait to see where you head with this!
PamFraley_KristenDrawOver.jpg

@AngelinaKizz Thanks. I wasn't sure how polished everything should be, so that is helpful info.

@Melissa-Bailey Thanks for all info. I am actually doing the dummy for the SCWBI Critique with an art director, so they aren't specific on what you need to submit as far as a dummy goes. Eventually I will do a dummy for publishers, but for now, it is for this specific event. I am new to SCWBI, so thanks for listing all the great resources; I really need to go and look to see what they have to offer because I didn't know about all this.

@Griffin Thanks. I will definitely keep that in mind. I will have look into sending my info to reps.

@Neha-Rawat Congrats on the offer, but that sounds like it could be a very stressful way to work. I'd like to know more about how much flexibility you'd have as the project progresses.

Thanks everyone!

@davidhohn I just finished your Basic and am going to start the advanced. Great stuff and you are a great teacher. Thanks.

Melissa Bailey accurately described every brand of pencil I was going to contribute.

What I will add as a colored pencil artist, is that any set can fit your budget. This idea of needing 76 Colors to make art, is unnecessary. If you have a limited budget, consider buying open stock, and getting primaries. Though my selection of primaries is different than red yellow and blue. I can get a better variety and brightness by using magenta, yellow and cyan than I can from the standard blue red and yellow. Add in white and black and you’re quite well rounded. If the budget is bigger than just those 5 pencils, add the Colors that are harder to create, the soft pastels, warm greys, and I love a paynes grey.

I have invested in pencil crayons, like they’re going out of style, and I have a small jar of my go tos that I constantly use. And I have tonnes that have never been sharpened. It just goes to show, that with practice, you can get a broad range of Colors from a very small spectrum.

My personal favourites are Polychromos, lightfast, and luminance. I’m rather against prismacolor since they changed manufacturing. They break more than not, and I’ve had pencils that crack up the entire shaft with a single turn in the sharpener. I also find that the cores aren’t centered, which leads to more issues with sharpening. I find that they’ll cost you more than buying higher quality because of so much waste in breakage. I would highly advise to skip them. If you want a big set, that’s cheaper, look for something like Derwent Colorsoft.

So I have never really done environments, competitions etc or talked to a great bunch of people all trying to improve - usually, things I made are in the void and this is all was out of my comfort zone. I can see I have things I need to learn which is only a good thing, more work on construction, perspective, more on values and environments and I think it's maybe not really getting the lucky story across anymore etc but I like at least having a place to talk about it.
Somewhat reluctant to enter into the end if the month "lucky" prompt competition because I think I need to get a lot better on areas and things and running out of time. But here are two iterations I came up with and would like any feedback. Untitled_Artwork 5.jpg
Untitled_Artwork 6.jpg

@willicreate Great article. It helped me make a decision about what I need. Thanks

@Valerie-Light maybe I’ll add that guy in! I posted this before making that drawing. That’s a great point about some of the pieces "saying the same thing". I think each piece should have a distinct feeling in a portfolio, otherwise it’s sort of wasted space. I’d never even thought about the fact that I never really illustrate character interactions until I got the responses from this post so I’m glad that I did. An overarching sort of theme in my work for years has been solitude, often just individual characters in a story that’s just their own. I don’t want to abandon those kind of illustrations entirely but I see that they’re not fitting for a children’s book portfolio. Another angle is that maybe I can do some illustrations that are just individual characters but they’re interacting more heavily with the world around them.