19 Wednesday Jun 2024
Looking for more ways to get your voice out?
Whether you’re a PAL member, independently published, or pre-published, Kite Tales wants to hear about your stories and experiences in the kid lit world. Writers, illustrators, translators, editors, publishers, agents, teachers, librarians, and more welcome!
Continue reading13 Wednesday Mar 2024
by Roya Asgari
Since becoming a working illustrator seven years ago, I’ve come to understand that creating charming book illustrations requires more than artistic skill. It also takes creativity, storytelling ability, and an understanding of a book’s themes and audience. Here are some tips I’ve learned from working with art directors and self-publishing authors.
Continue reading09 Wednesday Aug 2023
Tags
author-illustrator, authors, Brady Smith, illustrators, Louie and Bear, Random Acts of Drawness, You're Missing It!
Anyone who has seen the Instagram series Random Acts of Drawness knows that Brady Smith can draw just about anything. In addition to being a first-class speed drawer, he’s written and illustrated three picture books, an interactive activity/sketchbook, and a graphic novel series.
He’s also a fine artist who’s had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Houston, and New York and painted over half a dozen large-scale murals in LA, Salt Lake City, and Austin.
Brady spoke to us about his work and process from his studio in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, Tiffani Thiessen, their two kids, four dogs, and eleven chickens.
Continue reading28 Wednesday Jun 2023
Tags
authors, craft, digital, illustrator tips, illustrators, improv, Laura Hunt, process, SCBWI community, SCBWI members, sketch comedy, watercolor, writers
In SCBWI-L.A.’s latest Twitter Banner Contest, illustrators were asked to submit their most creative response to our prompt: KITE NIGHT. The winning contestant’s artwork is featured on the Los Angeles Region SCBWI Twitter profile until the next contest, with a feature article published here on Kite Tales.
We’re excited to announce Laura Hunt as our winner! Laura is an author-illustrator who grew up in Connecticut and now resides in Los Angeles with her college sweetheart, young son, and old Yorkie. Her dummy received an honorable mention from PB Party 2023. Her comedy writing background includes writing sketches on a house team for the Upright Citizens Brigade, and her work has been featured on Funny or Die and HuffPost.
Read on to learn more about Laura, her tools and tips, and what inspires her work.
Continue reading10 Wednesday Aug 2022
Tags
Emily Asaro, illustrator tips, illustrators, portfolio tips, portfolios, SCBWI members, watercolor
In SCBWI-L.A.’s latest Twitter Banner Contest, illustrators were asked to submit their most creative response to our prompt: FLIGHTS OF FANCY. The winning contestant’s artwork is featured on the Los Angeles Region SCBWI Twitter profile until the next contest, with a feature article published here on Kite Tales.
We’re excited to announce Emily Asaro as our winner! Emily is an illustrator who grew up in a small beach town in southern New Jersey. She has spent most of her life by the sea and currently calls the West coast home. She has won the SCBWI-L.A. Illustrator’s Day 2019 Portfolio contest and the Illustration Mentorship contest and shows her work at galleries all over Southern California.
Read on to learn more about Emily, her tips and tools, and what inspires her work.
Continue reading26 Wednesday Jan 2022
Posted in #KTIllustrates, Illustrator's Gallery
A native to Southern California, Andrea Yomtob worked for twenty years as a Computer Animator/FX Artist at Nickelodeon and Film Roman, until she found her love for writing and illustrating picture books. She has created the winning piece for our 2nd Annual #KTIllustrates Contest, announced last month.
Andrea enjoys combining mediums like watercolor and collage with her digital animation skills. Today we find out more about her passion for illustrating for kids.
Continue reading10 Friday Dec 2021
Posted in #KTIllustrates, Contests & Grants, Illustrator's Gallery
This year we had a tremendous amount of participation in our #KTIllustrates Contest, with entries inspired by the prompt: “Here you will find the dragon’s secret.” The contest was open to any form (spot, spread or cover design) and in any medium, so long as it kept the interpretation of the prompt as it would apply to children’s books.
The winner is set to receive a gift certificate to ArtSupply Warehouse and will have a feature interview article for Kite Tales coming soon. So let’s give a hand to our winner and two runners up!
Continue reading31 Wednesday Oct 2018
By Frans Vischer
My first day at school in America was a doozy. My family immigrated from Holland when I was eleven years old. I was shy, and didn’t speak English, and I needed to use the restroom. The entire class got involved, guessing what I tried to tell the teacher. Out of desperation, I made a drawing of a kid on the toilet, which to my dismay, the teacher shared with the class, before taking me to the restroom.
01 Wednesday Nov 2017
Posted in Illustrator's Gallery, Tips and Tools
By Kat Hubbs
When you are new to an industry, you have to find ways to promote yourself and get your work out there. I am not naturally inclined to self-promotion, so I decided to start a personal project that I could create and share quickly – something that was tangible, allowing people to interact with my art. To keep myself on track, I knew that I would have to enjoy the process and not have a demanding schedule. I decided a monthly calendar image would be just right for my goals.
I love learning new things, and have spent the last year creating and experimenting drawing digitally. I got an iPad Pro and threw myself into all the apps and tools. I find that the Procreate App is one of the best since it is easy to use and has great pencil brushes available. I am able to draw fast and loose, maintaining the expressive quality of my lines, while giving me the freedom to hit “undo”. I still create on paper, and I know when I draw with my favorite brush pen I am more thoughtful as I work, and I get all the happy accidents that happen when you can’t erase. So I decided that I needed to merge the two: get the look and feel of my favorite brush pen, while having the freedom of digital drawing. Continue reading
20 Wednesday Sep 2017
Posted in Illustrator's Gallery
Ellen Jin Over is an art director, visual development artist, and illustrator. She’s also our featured artist in this quarter’s Illustrator Gallery! Her work has appeared on televisions all over the world for the last 20 years. Spirit Riding Free, now on Netflix, is her latest project. Before that, she was art director on Disney’s Tinkerbell movies for nine years.
She didn’t always know what she wanted to do with her life until her senior year in high school pushed her to figure it out. “I got lucky that my long-forgotten childhood obsession of drawing and making paper dolls suddenly came back to my mind one day and I decided to major in art. After studying illustration at Otis, I stumbled upon a job interview for a position in an animation company.” The rest is history! Her program of choice is Adobe PhotoShop, something we tend to think of for editing photos, not creating illustrations, but Ellen does beautiful things with it! She tells us more in the interview below.
Sarah Parker-Lee: How did you choose to use Photoshop over other programs?
Ellen Jin Over: Photoshop has been around for 30 years. When I was going to school in the early 90’s, that was the only computer software that was available for students at Otis School of Art and Design. It was mostly for graphic designers. It just happened that illustrators like me found it useful to create images too…Photoshop started to be used more in some animation studios for digital paintings [in the] late 90’s.
There are many painting software today such as Painter, Coral Painter, Illustrator, etc–some for professionals and some for “regular Joe” doodling. I just have not found any other software that is comparable to Photoshop. It’s fast and easy.
SPL: Do you only work digitally or do you do any hand drawing? What do you think are the benefits of each? Continue reading
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