New Craft Coalition

Renata will be at the New Craft Coalition this weekend featuring her books, drawings, and prints. And hopefully getting more inspiration for our book Crafty Llama.

http://newcraftcoalition.com

Oct 16 - 17 at Festival Hall in Inglewood 1215 10 Ave SE

Eat Sleep PAINT

Renata is part of a group show opening this Thursday Sept 10 at Midtowne Gallery here in Calgary. We named the show Eat Sleep PAINT after one of the artists mentioned the phrase in a twitter post. The name stuck despite the fact that Renata will be showing drawings(!) but Eat Sleep DRAW doesn't sound as good as Eat Sleep PAINT when you shorten it (E.S.D. versus E.S.P.)

This bittersweet drawing is one of the original drawings she will be exhibiting. Thanks to our friend Derek Dennett for curating and including us in this show with the other super illustrators.

E.S.P.

Eat Sleep PAINT / Art by Illustrators

Opening Thursday Sept 10 from 5-8 pm

show runs until Oct 3

Maya Gohill

Mike Kerr

Karen Klassen

Renata Liwska

Midtowne Gallery 

9250 Macleod Trial SE

located within

ITS WORTH FRAMING

from 5 to 8 pm

This Way, That Way is out tomorrow

This Way, That Way written by Doreen Cronin and illustrated by Renata Liwska is officially released tomorrow (June 30, 2015) Yeah!

From School Library Journal
PreS-Gr 2—Boom the bear cub, Twitty the robin; and Snot the snail are back for another adventure as they decide on the perfect spot to spend the day. Boom thinks the perfect spot is "this way" to the beach, where he can jump and splash, while Twitty wants to go "that way" to the mountains to hike and look. Snot brought the snack but keeps quiet as the friends disagree over which way to go. They soon discover that Snot is gone, and a trail of blueberries leads Boom and Twitty to a place they can all enjoy. Liwska's fine pencil illustrations in a subdued color palette are soft, charming, and expressive. VERDICT Readers will enjoy this journey to find the perfect spot.—Sarah Polace, Cuyahoga Public Library System, OH

Here is a little bit more sketch process for the book. I thought this was interesting in how the composition was subtly rearranged as it progressed.

Renata's first sketch is very simple, for a reason, she wants to keep her options open so as the drawing progresses she can have lots of room for spontaneous inspiration. The main purpose of the initial sketch is to communicate to her editor what she wants to draw. And another reason the drawing is kept simple is that the editors don't always agree with what the artist wants to draw, so it's not a good idea to get too emotionally invested in a sketch. (Renata does anyway!)

Every artist is different in how they approach finished artwork. Some do a lot of preliminary sketches to clearly establish the composition, tracing and retracing until everything is worked out. Renata will have none of that, she puts her pencil down in one spot and starts drawing! She's at her best when she is the least prepared, it's a type of intuitive drawing that she excels at. (and not something I recommend for more mortal folk like myself!)

Her ability to create as she goes doesn't mean that everything that she puts on paper is magically perfect, well mostly it is, but occasionally parts of the drawing don't work out or she comes up with a better idea. And that's where the computer comes in.

As you can see above Renata decided to redraw Boom so that that he interacts more with the other characters, and thereby he becomes the center of focus, expresses more personality and character, and ultimately provides more nuanced storytelling. Instead of redrawing the entire drawing, Renata draws a new version of Boom swimming and photoshops it into the original drawing.

When Renata first started illustrating she did oil painting for finished art. But one of her art directors was so enamored with her pencil drawing that he asked her if she could just color the drawing digitally. Renata wasn't that digital at the time so I showed her a comic book style of coloring using multiply in photoshop. Since then she's become such a digital master I can't even understand how she does it anymore – the best descriptor I can think of is that she does a mushy photoshopy style of coloring. But the one insider tip I can offer is that she doesn't paint the characters, she draws them with color. This is a misconception I see with a lot of beginner digital artists. They will spend years learning to draw with a pencil but when it comes to colouring they will try to paint, throwing out all that experience with drawing.

One final note, you might have noticed that she reversed the final art in the end. Ever try that with one of your drawings? Not me, everything looks wonky when I reverse my drawings! But not Renata's...

Process for This Way, That Way

Renata has a new book out at the end of this month, it's called This Way, That Way. It's super sweet with plenty of 'ahhhh' moments! It's written by Doreen Cronin and is the companion book to Boom, Snot, Twitty. 

I thought you would enjoy some of the process that goes into creating the lovely pictures that Renata made for This Way, That Way. For a change the original sketches were done right on the computer. Renata has an older Wacom Cintiq 21UX which allows her to draw directly on the screen. Once the rough sketches are approved she does a graphite drawing in her sketchbook. She scans that and then colors the drawings in photoshop. The pencil drawing is on the top layer and the white is made transparent using multiply, The colors are applied underneath using photoshop brushes. Some of Renata's trademark fuzzy drawings are applied as colors over top the drawing as well - such as the water current. The process below is pretty subtle.

This one was a pretty straight forward process, I've photographed another with a bit more twists and turns that I will post next week.

New Craft Coalition and Crafty Llamas

Oh my where to begin! It's been awhile so maybe I'll start at the end. These are some drawings Renata is doing for New Craft Coalition coming this May 22 and 23, it's a carefully curated collection of craft, art, and design. We are a big fans of the coalition and excited to be chosen to be included, It's going to be a lot of fun!

But it's not all fun and games, we're also doing New Craft Coalition to do research for a new book series for Bloomsbury called Crafty Llama. Renata is illustrating a story I've written for her about a Llama who knits, of course, and decides to show her work at a craft fair. So it only made sense that we do a craft fair ourselves to get inspiration. Just over a week ago we also did Market Collective and Renata got some great character and story ideas from the wonderful people we met there.

Doing the drawings just for the fun of it has really reenergized Renata which is good because she has a lot of exciting work ahead of her before she can even start Crafty Llama.

As we are currently waiting patiently for Summer, Renata is trying to think about winter as she works on a lovely story called Waiting for Snow written by Marsha Diane Arnold. It's a return for Renata working again with The Quiet Book editor Kate O'Sullivan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

At the same time she is also working on a super story written by Mac Barnett called Places To Be. This one has been a long time coming, but the wait has been worth it and the book is going to be a wonderfully inspiring place to be!

I thought I would update a story Renata just completed a few months ago called Dormouse Dreams written by Karma Wilson. I'm biased, of course, but each time I see the artwork on Renata's computer screen (see above) I'm blown away by the beauty of it, it's a winner.

And last but not least I want to mention This Way That Way written by Doreen Cronin which is coming out next month. Renata had a lot of fun with this book and it shows.

That's all for now, I'll be back soon with more on This Way, That Way.
Visit Renata on Twitter @RenataLiwska for more up to date happenings.

Finalist for the 2014 Governor General's Awards

This year Renata was nominated for Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award for Literature for her illustrations in Once Upon a Memory written by Nina Laden. http://ggbooks.ca

This is her third time as a finalist for the award, The Quiet Book and Red Wagon have been nominated previously, but it is no less exciting and humbling to be selected amongst all the amazing picture books made by Canadians. Such as the other wonderful finalist including Marie-Louise Gay for Any Questions? written by Marie-Louise Gay and published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, Qin Leng for Hana Hashimoto, Sixth Violin, written by Chieri Uegaki and published by Kids Can Press, Julie Morstad for Julia, Child, written by Kyo Maclear and published by Tundra Books, and Jillian Tamaki for This One Summer, written by Mariko Tamaki and published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press.

Interestingly three of the finalists, Renata, Jillian Tamaki, and Julie Morstad are graduates of the same alma mater, The Alberta College of Art and Design. The winner will be announced in a few days!