Coming to (North) America

Is it too early to start talking about Renata's next book "Once Upon a Memory" written by Nina Laden. Maybe, it's not out until December 3rd after all ... but what the heck. This was one of Renata's favorite drawings for the book, however,  it's not in the finished picture book! 

Sometimes a drawing that makes perfect sense in your mind, isn't so clear for others. This drawing didn't quite work in the context of the story. Unfortunately this can happen more often than an artist would like. We try to bounce the ideas off each other but even then we are sometimes too close to those drawings and can't get the proper perspective - I guess that's what editors are for right?

As with all of Renata's drawings this image is more than a reflection of the text she is illustrating, it is also a reflection of her own experiences. Like many an old tale of immigrants coming to America, Renata came to North America with a few sentences in english, her life savings (exchanged for a couple of hundred Canadian dollars), and her hopes and dreams of course!

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)

Looking for Higher Ground

Now that the flood waters have receded and the power has been restored, we are finally back at our studio today (we were happy to see that the studio remained dry!).

We have been working at home for the week the power was down. In the ten years or so that we have been living at our house, we have maybe seen two or three spiders. But in the days before the flood came, we had quite a few spider sighting at our house. Now, after the flood is over, there are again no spiders to be found.

Did they know something we didn't, and were they looking for higher ground? They are most definitely closer to the Earth than we are.

Maurice Sendak

Where The Wild Things Are was the first book I bought when I came to North America many years ago. And I think it was the book that got me really interested in drawing, before that I was mostly painting. My favorite book of his is A Hole Is To Dig. 

The Society of Illustrators in NYC is holding an exhibition from June 11, 2013 - August 17, 2013 and the opening reception is June 14th. Find out more HERE

Petit Panda softcover

Little Panda and the Flying Tiger as it is titled overseas has been re-released today in France 

as a cute little, or should I say, petite softcover book.