The theme of this year’s New England Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference was “Create Bravely: Make Your Mark.” NESCBWI is a regional chapter of the national SCBWI and the conference was held in Springfield MA this year. I only joined the organization a year ago but I did attend last year’s conference on one day to see what it was like. As you might have guessed, I liked it a lot. This year I signed up for all three days and also signed on for the portfolio and illustration challenges. What was I thinking? Yikes!

Although I have been a practicing professional artist most of my life putting together a true illustration portfolio was a challenge. I had to add quite a bit of new work and still there were some elements missing. I have a lot of work yet to do but I had to just decide to go with it and put forth what I did have. I had postcards and business cards for people to pick up as well. From what is left, a lot of people picked them up.

On Friday night everyone who had entered the challenge put out their portfolios to be viewed by all conference attendees, including art designers, agents and publishers. Talk about being nervous! I think there were 40-50 portfolios.

I put in some whimsical illustrations as well as my more detailed ones. This one is for a middle grade novel I am working on.

This colored pencil piece was done for a picture book I’m working on but I’m not sure it is relevant to what I am thinking about now. It did show my style, though so I kept it in. This and the one of the two little girls got a lot of positive feedback.

This piece was the one I entered in the illustration challenge and it was exhibited in the main hall all day Saturday. Our challenge was to read the original 1899 version of the Wizard of Oz, choose a passage and then illustrate it in a two page format, 10 x 16.” I chose the passage where Dorothy, who has fallen asleep in the poppy field, wakes to find herself surrounded by thousands of mice, including the Queen of Mice, who befriends her. This also got a lot of great feedback and it was really fun to see all the different passages people chose and how they chose to illustrate them.

I took many workshops, listened to inspiring keynote talks by Jane Yolen, Peter H. Reynolds and Laurel Snyder and also listened to several panels of publishers and agents. It was a very full weekend with very long days but I came home with so much information and inspiration it will take some time for it to all sink in. I also met so many wonderful people that I was inspired by that I was a bit overwhelmed by the time I left. The above picture I took in one of my favorite workshops, Pacing the Picture Book. As you can see, it was very hands on and lots of fun!

Now, it is time to get back in the studio and work! I attended a goal setting workshop in which I publicly announced my goal of having my picture book and dummy ready to go by July 1.