Trying Batik

 I finally tried Batik!
 I went to the craft complex near my condo with some out of town guests and we spent "Craft Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, trying our hands at one of SE Asia's favorite art forms.
 The basics: you draw an image with wax, paint over it, and then melt the wax to allow the cloth below to stand out.
 Actually we drew with pencil first, onto silk, then drew with wax.
 Although the women operating the batik booth at the craft complex were willing to do the wax part for us, I tried my hand at it with the Labyrinth I made. It was really fun, even if my hand was a bit shaky and inexperienced with the wax tool. On my second piece I decided to let the ladies help since my second piece was pretty detailed (plus those ladies were so fun to watch!).
 I used part of one of my drawings from last month, the train engine, since I thought it might something I could hang on my son's wall (he loves trains).
 I had so much fun!
 I realized too, that I'm not really as slow as I always say I am at working -- it's just my usual medium, collage, is slow. I was lightning fast at Batik (I made two pieces while everyone else made one and I probably could have made a third).
 If I were a painter, I think I'd be faster. I realize that collage just takes longer. I'm okay with that. It's the medium I dream in, it's close to my heart and it's what I know best. So be it if I'm slower than I'd be in another medium (And I'm still working at making it faster).
 I should have handled the train engineer differently in Batik to make the white outlines work better, I think the engine looked better before the wax was melted. All in all it was a fun experiment, though.
I'm definitely going to try to learn more about Batik while I'm in Malaysia. I think I'll take a more in-depth class sometime in the next few months. I'm thinking it would be cool to use some batik techniques on paper for my collages. At the very least it would be a fun take-home from my two years in Malaysia.

PiBoIdMo a success!

Pictured here: my current idea journal before I started filling it.
Almost forgot to give myself a pat on the back for completing Picture Book Idea Month. Yes, I wrote down a picture book idea everyday for the entire month of November.

It was a delightful experience. I learned that I love brainstorming, that good ideas often do come after I've flushed through the first 5 to 10 starts and that I need not treat ideas so preciously -- rather it's great to spout them out! For me, quantity does bring quality in the case of ideas.

Be bold!
If anyone out there also participated and would be interested in trading a sort of idea-critique, please consider yourself invited to contact me! I'd love to have outside thoughts on which ideas others think are most interesting. I can't wait to at least share them with my critique group. (Keeping my fingers crossed that we can meet over the holidays when I'm home).

So I'm sending happy branistorming thoughts out in the world today. I hope you catch some of them.

Let the craft season begin!

Thanksgiving usually ushers in a season of I-can't-help-but-get-crafty time for me. The holiday itself often ends up being a bit of a crafty day itself. This year's Thanksgiving was no exception, even though my crafty sister wasn't around to egg me on. My son, Oscar, and I ushered in the craft season together by making an awesome paper train "book" that he's now obsessed with.
We also had to be a bit crafty with our Turkey this year. We couldn't find one. My husband made a delicious chicken (you can see it cooking in the oven below and then fully prepared in the second picture below).
But I so wanted a turkey. I know it's a bit silly when your hubby is willing to make something that looks as good (and tastes as good as it looks) as this:
But there's also something to be said for comfort food when you're oceans away from home. So after I mentioned on facebook that I couldn't find a turkey, some KL friends came to the rescue and told us about a hotel that made fully prepared Thanksgiving dinners. Luckily we had three hungry American back-packer friends staying with us to help eat all that food!

So my Thanksgiving wishes came true last week. I got my crafty time, and my Turkey.

Drawings

While I'm not going to be able to finish my lofty goal of completing 10 collage illustration samples this month (the following are just drawings),
I'm happy that I feel I've made progress on my main goal: to try to ditch some of the perfectionist in me and speed up.
Obviously I didn't speed up enough to finish.
But, it's a process. Bit by bit. Right?
Plus I'm psyched that I actually like the pieces I'm working on. I kind of didn't expect to because I was going more for quantity, not quality (hard to ditch that perfectionist entirely though). 

My favorite of these drawings is probably the tea party. For that one I challenged myself to try to make some sort of illustration for/about/honoring Malaysia.
While I won't finish these illustrations this month (I'll be in Singapore when this post goes up, tagging along with my husband on a business trip. Who knew I'd get the chance to go to Singapore this month?), I'll look forward to finishing them in the upcoming weeks.
Just thought I'd post the drawings for now.

Keep on keepin' on, everybody!

A little more greatness

I just found out a fun challenge that seems to go with the spirit of November for me: PiBoIdMo. It's picture book idea month -- write a picture book idea every day for the month of November. Check it out on Tara Lazar's blog. I'm in! Fun.

My cheerleader is in town!

 I've had my mom visiting here for the last two weeks!
These are pictures from the Islamic Art Museum.
 I had to share one of my favorite art spots in Kuala Lumpur with my mom!
 My mom's my cheerleader. She always brings out my inner little engine that could.
 She's also an ex-English teacher and an extremely helpful copy-editor. It's good to have a copy-editor on your team.
Laini Taylor put up a great post about cheerleaders a few weeks ago. Maybe you saw it? 
So who is your cheerleader?

To Bali and Back

I've been in Bali with the family the last couple of weeks.
 
Is this my life?
Yes, I suppose so.
 My favorite part was meeting artists and seeing the places where they work. 
 Bali has some of the most amazing handicrafts in the whole world, which is one of the reasons I wanted to go there. 
 And I wasn't disappointed.
I especially loved the Ikat weaving,
the shadow puppet studios, 
the carving that was everywhere, 
 and seeing children learning to draw.
 I also loved this place called Threads of Life which is an organization that promotes preserving traditional weaving traditions throughout Indonesia.
 Overall the trip inspired me. 
I was inspired by the way the people expressed their spirituality,
by the scenery,
 by the colors,
and perhaps most of all by the way it seemed everyone on the island was an artist (I'm not exaggerating that point).
 Sometimes I'm frustrated living in Southeast Asia; I feel like there's more obstacles than usual to my work and I'm also so far away from the community I love.
 But, as I've said before, I'm also so, so, deeply grateful for this experience and adventure into the new and unknown.
And I'm not sure why, but it's also making me want to break away from some of my shyness and share my own art with the world better.
I hope I can find a way to do so.

P.S. two of the above pictures (the crazy painted wall and the creative boat) are actually from a small island called Gili Trawangan, off the coast of Lombok -- the next island to the east from Bali in Indonesia, where we also spent a couple of days relaxing on the beach. There were no cars on the island -- only horse-drawn carriages and bikes. How cool is that?

Light

"Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished."
-Michael Strassfeld
"Sunshine is my quest."
-Winston Churchill

"If the children ask, 'What color is God?'..."

"...You can choose whatever color you want. That's why I illustrated the hands here all colors."
--Ashley Bryan, speaking today about an illustration in his book, All Things Bright And Beautiful.

I'm in Los Angeles, California, at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' Conference. And to be quite frank, the main reason I knew I had to come was because one of my favorite illustrators of all time, Ashley Bryan, 87, would be here.
I remember when his book, Let It Shine, came out a couple of years ago. I checked it out from the library, along with the enormous stack of picture books I usually check out (how I've missed this ritual in Malaysia!) and one afternoon I opened it to read while my nearly one-year-old baby, Oscar, napped in my lap.

It's a book of three African American Spirituals, all songs I, myself, regularly sang in church growing up. And Ashley's art opened something inside me up that first time I read it -- just like a real, spiritual hymn does, when it's sung from the heart. I remember crying there on the spot, sitting in our rocking storytime chair, cradling my precious little Oscar. I read the book over and over, several times in a row. And I sang the songs the pictures illustrate. Thinking about that moment now, I'm reminded of one of my favorite poems, by the 14th century poet, Hafiz, Dropping Keys.

Dropping Keys
by Hafiz

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.

While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.


To me it felt, and still feels, that Ashley Bryan's illustrations in that book are like the keys. They unlock and open something beautiful inside.

So that brings us back to today. Today also gifted me with a bit of magic. I spent an hour listening to Ashley Bryan talk about creating art. Eyes can tell you so much about a person. Ashley has the kind of eyes that dance. They are alive. (It might be my new biggest dream -- should I be so lucky -- to have my eyes do the same thing when I'm his age).

And his words, too, have the sort of spark that's contagious. By the end of the hour session, every person in that room looked more alive, fired-up, and ready to find and share the best of who they are.
Here's a few quotes (perhaps I should say they are as close to the real quote as possible, I tried as best as I could, but I might have missed the exact way he said them a bit):

"The Artist is not a special kind of person. Every person is a special kind of artist."

"Everyone of us is writing to pull something real and true out of ourselves and give it to the world."

"Whenever we start something new, it's good to affirm who we are within, that's why I start with reciting a poem."

"African American spirituals came from people who worked from the break of daylight to nightfall. But they still created. They found a way."

"My editor wanted me to get something written down about my life. So we talked about it. And in that conversation, she asked me, 'How did you persist through all the obstacles, in your life and somehow still manage to do what you do?' and, well, I answered, 'Isn't that the very story of life?' And isn't it? That's what we do as people -- we work to overcome obstacles. Life's about not giving up when you face challenges but plowing through those challenges. It's everyone's story."
Two more things I learned during the session. First, the xerox photos of scissors on the end-pages in Ashley's books are of his mother's embroidery/crochet scissors and his mother's dress-making scissors. He uses those two pairs of scissors to cut out every collage in his books. His mom never let him play with them as a child, but now he plays with them everyday. I LOVE this. So many artists use razors for cut-paper work. I'm with Ashley. I use a scissors. Scissors are a perfect thing.

Second, Ashley said he always carries around his recorder. As in the instrument. Because he never knows when it will be time to play some music. So he played for us. So fun.

I did take pictures from the session, but unfortunately I didn't bring my camera cord so I can't download them! I'll add them later. *UPDATE*: added them! Sorry it took so long.

Tomorrow Ashley will give the ending keynote address for the conference. You can bet that the last poem of the conference hasn't been recited yet.

Like a tree

"The only way most people recognize their limits is by trespassing on them." -- Tom Morris
Sorry for the lack of posts. I suppose in the last couple of weeks I've dropped into the studio abyss. Or, forgive the cheesiness, the a-bliss? I'm hard at work, nose to the grindstone, with samples for a dummy -- some new collages that are just the right kind of harder-than-heck challenge -- and I'm loving every God-blessed minute of it. Sometimes life is difficult. Just the right kind of difficult.
Hey, on a similar note, I think it's fascinating to hear how long artists spend on any given piece. I know full well that I have many a practical peer who won't spend more than one day on a final piece (I've tried it -- I like it. But. The work I'm doing now calls for something different). I heard from an art director that one artist he knows only spent an hour on an award-winning cover. I've also watched a video of Eric Carle at work whipping out those fun and spirited collages he makes in a similar amount of time. How long does your art take? Are you fast? Or are you slow?

Me? With the work I'm doing now, I'm a bit of a glacier, or a redwood tree, I confess. I just finished a collage that I made while listening to 3 audio books, 11-to-14-hour-long audio books. That's right. Thirty to forty hours. And that doesn't even involve the prep work -- making paper, taking photos for the photo elements, painting the painted parts, drawing. Nope. That only includes cutting everything out and gluing it down. It's a rather embarrassing amount of time that, I'm certain, many people would chastise me over (including my family). But, whatever. It is what it is. I wasn't wasting time or anything. It's just what this particular piece called for (I use a surgical tweezers for small bits -- there were hundreds of small bits in this collage). It is what it is.



Some novelists write an entire draft in November (Nanowrimo anyone?) and others take years to finish a draft (even working constantly). And some of the results of both variety are amazing. And some of the results of both variety suck. It's just the way it is.

What works for you? And have you tried the opposite? What were the results?

Paper Marbling

A couple years ago, at an SCBWI picture book retreat with

Denise Fleming

, I learned a simplified version of paper marbling using shaving cream and food coloring.

This past week (after finally getting my paper-making area set up in my new studio) I put that knowledge to use!

I didn't use food coloring this time. Instead I used the paper-making dyes I use when I dye the paper I make. I did this so I could play with color a bit more.

I needed some "river" paper, which is why I took this on.

These are some photos of the blue versions.

I also made some muddy brown marbled paper too.

I'm so grateful to Denise for teaching me how to do this!

And I can't wait to see how it looks in the collages I'm working on.

Colorful Snippets From Singapore

I spent most of last Saturday at the Asian Festival of Children's content in Singapore (the rest of the weekend I spent admiring colorful places -- easy to find in Singapore -- as evidenced from these photos).
I left the festival and Singapore feeling a bit dazed at what a big wide world we live in, with a mind-boggling array of differences in children' s book markets.
I also had many strange moments of seeing things from a different perspective regarding the children's book market back home in the United States.
One speaker, when talking about why small publishers and authors should have promotional materials in English, said something to the effect of, "Everyone thinks the U.S. is the Holy Grail of Children's book markets. Break in there and you can make it anywhere. Then why don't all small publishers and authors have their promo materials in English?"

It was strange to think about challenges some of my colleagues have here compared to those of my colleagues at home.

I'm so used to various speakers moaning and groaning about the state of the market back home that I forget sometimes to remember how wide and big it actually is compared to other markets.
I also had some culture shock moments, like the nervous twitch I had going when one speaker mentioned that art-based picture books have little market in many parts of Asia as many parents are still focused on Education based books.

I tried just now to write about some recent experience with this mindset that would cause such a nervous twitch, but well, the politically correct public blogger who's afraid of closing my mind when it should be open won out and I edited. Let's just say this is something that I'm having a hard time relating to when I encounter it here, not only as an author and artist, but most especially as a mother.
So I had a nervous twitch going through some of the conference. I had many reminders that we are a big world with lots of view points. It's a challenge to keep it all in perspective, be respectful to differences while remaining true to my own heart while working on my own craft (and mothering my son).
But, lest I forget, challenges are the colorful rich stuff of life. And I can appreciate their beauty.

Lightning Strikes! (A way of taking good reference photos for action drawings)

Lightning strikes!
Literally.
I took these pictures using a method that I worked out during the Nevada mentor program last summer. It's a method of taking reference photos for action drawings.
I'd meant to post about this last fall but sometimes blogging has to take the back burner when there's lots going on. So here we are, better late than never.
While I was drawing the sketches for my mentor assignment, I was having a devil of a time capturing the movement of Dorothy tossing the pail of water on the wicked witch of the west.
When I first had the trouble, I tried what I usually have tried. I set my camera up on a shelf with the self-timer on and posed for a reference photo.
But it wasn't working.
Dorothy looked stiff and overly posed when I drew her. No matter how hard I tried.
I was brainstorming with my (patient) husband one night about it and he suggested that instead of photographing, I try videoing myself tossing the pail. So I did.

And I as I watched myself throw the pail I also remembered that I could pluck a single frame of the video out and save it as a picture. So I scrolled through the video, frame by frame, and picked a frame that I thought best caught the action. I used Quicktime pro to do this (if you are interested, type in "creating a still image from a movie" in help. I believe you do need the pro edition of Quicktime to do this but I'm not sure, you may be able to do it in regular Quicktime).
Voila! I had a decent reference photo that wasn't as stiff. By using the reference photo plucked from the video, I was able to draw a Dorothy that captured the action better. Yay!
Now the witches face...
That one was totally posed.
I bet she'd make the same face if she were caught in a thunder storm.

A new point of view

So here I am, typing at my computer in my new studio in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I'm not on the 13th and a half floor as previously promised in a blog post. We opted instead to live closer to my husband's office so his commute would be walkable.
So I'm on the 18th floor of a different building in the heart of Kuala Lumpur's financial district. These photos are of the view I have from my new studio and living room. The first photo is of the iconic Petronis towers and KL tower. The second is of the adjacent park and Mosque.
Here's what I've been hearing at sunrise (and depending on how well I'm listening, 4 other times during the day), the Islamic call to prayer:

I wonder what this new point of view will do for my art?
I look forward to finding out.