How to Begin?

How about we start with the beginning, or a beginning.

In the old days illustrators would do marker comps for ad agencies to pitch an idea to their client - you might have seen this on TV shows like Mad Men. In art college they used to teach us how to do these comps.

During our spring cleaning we found these old marker comp exercises done by Renata in her 2nd year in art college at ACAD.

These would have been created using markers and chalk. The trick was that they had to be done quickly, but photographic - the final ad would likely have used photography. The individual elements would often be drawn separately, cut out, and collaged together.

You can see that Renata is already exploring picture book themes such as mice. (a mouse is the star of the next book Renata will be illustrating)

This is an example of what the final presentation would look like. I think Renata did a pretty good job, of course she might have gotten docked a bit for not having an additional tracing paper flap!

Under New Management & Under Construction

As you may have noticed, Renata hasn't posted much lately. There is a good reason, she's been super busy this summer finishing up a book which is due next week! 

There's also good reason to believe that this will continue - she has a whole lot more books to do. But she also has lots of interesting things to blog about, including Once Upon a Memory written by Nina Laden which is coming this December.  

So the executive committee (Renata and myself) have given me the opportunity to fill the role as official blogger about all things Renata. It should be fun, as Renata's #1 fan I am excited to share the inside scoop - and Renata will stop by from time to time too. (note: the site may be a bit funky as I give it a tune up)