The More You Know...

     What came to my mind after researching submission guidelines for children's picture books is the saying The more you know, the more you know you don't know. It's like asking for a glass of water and getting sprayed down by a fire hose. I have so much to learn!

     I learned this week that children's picture books are traditionally 32 pages (about 12 to 15 spreads) and are kept to under 1,000 words. The target audience is generally ages 5 to 8. The other thing is to do my homework when deciding on an editor, agent or publisher because there are a lot of scams.

     As for my rough draft, it's finished! My word count is at 1,378. My goal was to keep it under 1,500 with the initial rough draft and then cut it down to under 1,000 with editing. Lot's of editing and changes to the story will happen, but round one is done :)

     Time to get some picture ideas going!

Unwelcome Visitor
(water color and oil pastel on water color paper)

     Here is a portion of a picture I did called Unwelcome Visitor. I was testing out water color for the background and adding pastel over the top for brighter colors and more details. Water color is a lot faster than oil pastels for covering large spaces. Water color paper still isn't my favorite when working with oil pastels. It takes a lot of work to keep the paper from showing through the pastels.

Wolf
(oil pastel on sketch paper)

   
     This next one, called Wolf, was especially fun for me to do. I felt a little more comfortable working with the oil pastels, especially with how they blend together.

     My kids and I went to the library and I checked out a couple of books on wolves. These gave me some good images to reference for wolf features, coloring and some basic shapes. When I got towards the end of my picture I had to stop referencing the book and only look at my paper to make the finishing touches work right. I was pleased with how this one turned out, except for the right eye. Even at the penciled in stage it just felt off. Instead of fixing it, I became impatient and wanted to get started putting some color into the picture. Hey, that's the fun part! Lesson learned, have more patience with the pencil sketches, a good foundation is worth it.
 
     In both of the above pictures I was working with oil pastels. There are a few things I really like about them so far :

• The colors can be really rich and vibrant.
• They are quick to set up and put away, perfect if you only have short windows of time to work on pictures.
• I can leave the picture for an hour, a day or a week and still come back to work on it without any problems.

A few draw backs are:

• My hands get messier than if I were painting with a brush.
• Oil pastels smudge super easy, which can get on other parts of your picture where you don't want it.

     This week I am planning to learn more about oil pastel techniques. Also I am going to learn about ISBN numbers. I need to know exactly what they are, why they're important and how to get one. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog, have a great week!