A CUDDLEctive of kidlit writer-Illustrators here to inspire you!
Author: thecuddlefishgang
We are Colorado-based CUDDLEective of children’s book
author-illustrators, passionate about creating and promoting
inspiring content for children, teachers, and fellow kidlit creatives.
AnyFin is possible when we swim together.
If you are an illustrator seeking agent representation, you have probably fantasized about getting THAT call or email with an offer- and maybe in your fantasy you just run around your home screaming “YES YES YES!” But before you start throwing confetti and dancing with joy, there are a few questions you should ask your prospective agent! I asked the Cuddlefish Gang (we have many agents between us, and a huge variety and breadth of experience) which questions they would advise asking. These may not apply to every situation- but it’s an excellent place to start. We hope these help and- happy agent searching!
1. How long have you been an agent?
2. How many other clients do you represent, and would you mind if I talked to one or two of them? Related, is there a lot of client turnover at the agency?
3. What are some recent books you sold?
4. Do you have an agency agreement I can look at? (Look for “cooling off” periods or any other criteria that feels odd/ not market standard)
5. What percentage does your agency take? (15% is standard for a literary agent, although it can vary for things like foreign rights sometimes)
6. Ask about foreign rights. Is there a separate foreign rights agency affiliation?
7. What is your preferred communication style?
8. Are you editorial—how hands-on are you? Do you like to add input such as editing suggestions?
9. Have you sold books similar to my project(s)? What publishers do you have in mind?
10. What is your favorite genre? What do you read for fun?
11. What is your favorite kind of project to sell?
12. How do you promote your illustrators?
13. Are there fees involved? (Maybe marketing fees like postcard printing and postage for example)
14. How do you communicate submissions and responses?
15. In a larger agency- would I work directly with the agent versus admin?
Perhaps most importantly—do I feel comfortable and supported in these answers? Because regardless of how they answer… they could be super rad and exciting… it always comes down to how comfortable you feel.
Five of our Cuddlefish got together on Saturday to talk about drawing one of our favorite subjects… babies! Do your baby drawings look like old men? Funky aliens? Or are they just missing that cute factor? Then this video is for you!
Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish. -Ovid
When I was a freshman studying painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I had the most wonderful professor. Her name was Susan Main, and she was and is a fabulous artist and teacher. She taught a class called Automatic Triggers, and whenever I am feeling extra prickly and uninspired— and ESPECIALLY when I feel like what I am making is becoming a bit stale and inauthentic, I try to take myself back to Automatic Triggers.
Being an artist is hard. There is no map for us. We are often grasping in the dark, trying to excavate content from our very being, and sometimes, the pressure and need to create can make one feel totally overwhelmed. I should know, I am feeling that way in this very moment! We live in a society nowadays that values quantity over quality (Likes, Follows, you know what I am talking about) and this has caused us to forget that the important work of the artist is to navigate through the world, a feeling and sensitive creature, and to turn those feelings into a product that can make others around us feel seen. To communicate in the most authentic way the human experience and to help teach lessons in only the way an artist can. And what is most the crucial component our work can possess? Authenticity. When something is inauthentically made, it lacks value and depth and becomes merely decorative, rather than meaningful. The role of us artists is to keep digging; to delve into the unknown, ready to grasp at that bit of light and self when it makes itself available, and to spin those fibers into meaningful, digestible ART.
So, let’s begin.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. – C.G. Jung
The idea of Automatic Triggers comes from the surrealist practice of working spontaneously, and discovering what one’s natural tendencies are. These practices were then adopted by the Abstract Expressionists whose works retain a sense of play, spontaneity, and gesture.
What are your tendencies? What is your natural mark making style? What images do you find yourself drawn to? If you are left to doodle aimlessly, thoughtlessly, what comes out of your pencil? What do you notice? What color palettes feel right to you? In essence, what is your visual language?
Exercise 1- Make Something
So, you’re feeling a bit stale… grab your sketchbook. Go on a walkabout. Pick things up. Smell the air. Feel. Now, open up your sketchbook and make a mark. Keep going. Don’t think! Don’t worry about the end result, that will stifle you. Is it ugly? Who cares! Now, study the page. What do you see? Are the marks painterly, gestural? Or clean and geometric. Are your shapes reading as feminine or masculine? Do you make dotted lines? Are your markings aggressive and hard or soft and gentle? Is what you draw abstract or did something representational show up?
Automatic Trigger Doodle
Now, take what you have made, and run with it. Use your triggers to inform a new piece, one that is created with more direction. As an illustrator now, I can use these trigger discoveries to help inform the more narrative pieces I am making nowadays. However, this process is more about getting to know yourself and bettering your practice than anything else, so don’t feel pressured to made something perfect. That is never the goal of these exercises.
Address process. What did it feel like? How did you begin? Did the process evolve after the painting was started? Did you plan the painting before hand, begin with a feeling surrounding the trigger and try to match that feeling formally, place the trigger on the canvas…etc.??? Difficulties? Structure, material, time, clarity, techniques or lack of (additive, subtractive), indecision, attachment. – Susan Main, class syllabus.
Exercise 2- SUBVERT!
Observe and identify formal elements from you Exercise 1. Use specific descriptive language: organic, geometric, rigid, illustrative, abstract, transparent, opaque, etc. Notice the palette you used.
Now, take those elements and create a contrasting piece.
Did you use organic lines? Make them rigid. Did you use geometric shapes? Make them organic. Flip everything on its head.
Exercise 3- Tools
In the original assignment, because this was meant to be a painting class, we were not to use brushes. We could only use a tool smaller or larger than our hand. For those of us who work digitally now, you can limit yourself to two very different digital brushes that you never use. Challenge yourself. Observe what this does to your trigger.
You are lost the instant you know what the result will be. -Juan Gris
These techniques are not meant create your greatest works, but rather to encourage you to consider your process and to explore and challenge yourself in unexpected ways. It is important to remain fluid in our creative practice, and to fight off rigidity and perfectionism. Art is a process. There is always room to grow.
Happy creating!
Thanks to Susan Main for providing me with all the syllabus information from this class (15 years ago!). You can see her work at www.susanmain.net.
Larry Day is the award-winning illustrator of both fiction and non-fiction. Visit him at https://larrydayillustration.com/ to see the full list! Larry Day was born and raised in Gibson City, Illinois, a rural farming community where he flunked high school Art. He received an Associate’s Degree in commercial art, and worked as a staff artist for pinball and video games before becoming a storyboard artist and picture book illustrator. Day is the recipient of 3 Gold medals from the Society Of Illustrators, and the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Not Afraid Of Dogs. Larry is repped by Hannah Mann at hmann@writershouse.com
EG Keller is the illustrator of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, and the picture book To the Moon and Back for You by Bravo star Emilia Bechrakis Serhant. As Gerald Kelley, he illustrated documentarian Ken Burns’ New York Times bestselling book, Grover Cleveland, Again!, and wrote and illustrated the picture book, Please Please the Bees, which won the 2017 Frances and Wesley Bock Book Award for Children’s Literature and was read aloud for Storyline Online by Rashida Jones.
Upcoming book titles include The Twisty-Turny House, Lobstah Gahden, and Murray Christmas. Visit him at http://egkellerdraws.com/
Jessica Lanan is an author, illustrator and painter living in Boulder, Colorado. She helps young readers discover the beauty and diversity of their world by creating books that are inspiring, accessible and memorable. Her goal is to help children understand that they are a part of the natural world.
She grew up in Longmont, Colorado and spent a lot of her childhood outside hiking and camping in the Rocky Mountains. She studied fine art at Scripps College and after graduation traveled solo for a year in various parts of Asia on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study and illustrate folk tales. She brought a travel set of watercolors on that trip and she has been painting ever since. Visit her at https://jessicalanan.com! Represented by Ed Maxwell, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, emaxwell@sjga.com
C. Grey Hawkins is an author, illustrator, mountain-lover, and connoisseur of old things from Denver, Colorado. He received his B.F.A. from California College of the Arts in Illustration.
Grey (Christian to friends) pulls inspiration heavily from the environment around him, and his experiences growing up as a seventh-generation Coloradan have shaped the texture of his work. The mediums he most enjoys using are pencil, ink, and charcoal – though he also paints in gouache and practices screen printing and etching. His work is often finished digitally to add color or simulate older methods of printing.
Grey Hawkins works primarily in children’s book illustration. In addition to having his work displayed in shows as varied as The Society of Illustrators in NY, NY (2016), Helicon Gallery in Denver, CO (2015, 2018, 2019), and at the Denver Art Museum (2011), Grey Hawkins was one of 25 prize winners out of 8,000 entries in the 2016 Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Competition.
In his spare time Grey Hawkins draws, camps, draws while camping, restores antiques and his old house, and tries to keep his 1968 Ford Falcon – named Flint – running. Grey Hawkins lives with his wife and fellow illustrator, Lily Williams, in their hundred year-old house in an old mining town in the mountains of Colorado. Visit Christian at https://www.greyhawkins.com/ to learn more!
Congratulations to Lily Williams, Illustrator for Go With the Flow, which was recognized:
Finally, we should congratulate Lily for the fantastic pre-release press she’s getting from the likes of Kirkus and School Library Journal on her upcoming release, If Bees Disappeared. (Coming in March!)
Congratulations to Dow Phumiruk for being signed to illustrate Better Together by Ben Gundersheimer for Penguin/Paulsen.
Also, congratulations to Dow Phumiruk, Illustrator for Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13, for being highlighted in A Mighty Girl!
Finally, we’re excited to celebrate the cover reveal for Hello, Tree by Ana Crespo, Illustrated by Dow Phumiruk (click on the title link to view the video)
Illustration by Anden Wilder
Congratulations to Anden Wilder for signing with Stephanie Fretwell-Hill at Red Fox Literary for representation.
Congratulations to Kaz Windness on the fantastic Kirkus review for her upcoming book release! “This collection leans into the macabre-the number of skewered eyes alone is unfathomable-and the gallows humor could easily make it a cult favorite.” Keep an eye out for this one!
Author/Illustrator Goal setting for Success in 2021
By Dow Phumiruk
Hello! So here we are at the end of this stupendously strange and difficult year. I hope you’ve gone easy on yourself all year long, as it’s been all about survival and not so much productivity, in my opinion! But looking into next year, let’s see what we can do to rise from the mess that was 2020.
I always set goals. But there is an art to goal setting! You must set different tiers of goals. And the first two tiers must be within your realm of control, not relying on luck or another person’s interest in your work, or anything at all that you cannot make happen.
Set 1: Achievable, inspirational, confidence- and wellness- boosting goals
Oh yes. These are fun! There is a parallel with people who like this set to those of us who make lists and add items just so that we can immediately cross them off. But do it. It brings that fresh feeling of accomplishment. Here are some examples:
Draw a holiday image in celebration
Share the holiday image on social media, or better yet: send it to a blogger like Kathy Temean who posts holiday image threads regularly. Here is her most recent holiday post for Thanksgiving as an example.
Try a new technique in art, illustration, or crafting. Anything new to rejuvenate those creative muscles! Here are some ideas:
Try new tools (oil paint sticks, white gel pens on brown or dark paper, etc). In digital art such as in Photoshop, search a tool or adjustment layer that you’ve haven’t used often if at all, and see what it can do! You may find yourself using it regularly after some quick research. Watch a Procreate tutorial or try an inexpensive new digital drawing app. I bet you’ll learn something new!
GIF making: it’d been a while since I had created a GIF, and I reacquainted myself with how to do so on the iPad. It’s relatively easy. My tip: try not to animate too many parts!! You start seeing how you can move a character, but when you do so, it ends up being a 40-layer file (close to the maximum number of layers allowed on Procreate). Instead, draw a nice character and animate just an extremity or text. It’s fun!
A quick good night GIF I sent to my daughter at college
I saw a friend post about making little dolls using honeycomb paper (wooden beads for heads and the honeycomb paper for their bodies/dresses). Here is a sample of ornaments made with honeycomb paper! Another friend and Cuddlefish member, Heather Brockman Lee, is creating super fun paper engineering projects like this one. What a great idea and challenge that is!
Speaking of 3D materials, what about air-dry clay? I like white Crayola brand clay (other artists I know enjoy Sculpey clay) and find it can be super fun to design your characters in 3D. Take time to visit or revisit this craft. You’ll have a lasting souvenir of your endeavor!
Custom fabric: For the first time, I custom-printed fabric with stuffed doll patterns on them. The doll character, a pet monster, is from my latest book. The patterns included faces, so this made assembling the stuffed toys very easy. They make a nice pairing with my book. Keep your outlines for the pattern faint, like in my sheet of Hugsbies here (hard black outlines may show in the finished project if you don’t sew the seams precisely).
Think on how ordering custom fabric with your design could work for marketing your project. It is very simple to print squares of art to sew into a small throw pillow, for example. I order from Spoonflower.com. Keep in mind, though, that their fabric is not super cheap, and rarely are there sales. Stick to basic cotton if that will fit your needs.
For wellness, please do make time for exercise. A little every day would be especially good in the setting of our sedentary lifestyles as writers/illustrators. Regular exercise is a great goal!
From Hugsby, back endpapers, copyright Dow Phumiruk
Set 2: Real Work!
Here you want to set some goals that will move you along in the direction that you want your career to go.
As an author/illustrator, three new dummies in the next year is a great goal. Three! That is not a big number, though I will agree that writing a story and then sketching the dummy are no small feats. Start with idea-churning. I like recommending January’s Storystorm from Tara Lazar to help with finding new ideas. I don’t join for the giveaways, but you could (it takes time, so I just skip). After the month of January, sift through and choose your best few. Start writing stories for those. In March, June, and September (you can pick the months!), create a dummy for three of those ideas. The goal in this business is to KEEP MOVING, and by this I mean keep creating. The act of creating over and over will soon result in that one great project – or two, or three. I think putting a teensy bit of pressure on yourself can work wonders here. Pick one of your ideas (the Rockefeller tree owl who found himself transported from upstate NY to NYC might be a popular one this year) and set aside an hour to write the story. One hour. On the clock. Sit and write. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be great.
As an illustrator, set a goal of new portfolio images. One every other month is a realistic number.
If you are a writer, would you like to try a new genre? This year I will be attempting a chapter book. Maybe you’ll want to try a novel in verse. If so, set a goal to start by reading x number of books in this format.
What about improving a certain aspect of your art or writing? One year I made a goal of drawing as many elbows as possible. How about ears, noses, or hands? Any focus and repeated efforts in one area should result in growth. You can set a concrete number: “In 2021, I will draw 25 completely new types of background scenes.” In writing, you can read about successful picture books and try mimicking them in your own work. A concrete goal would be: “I will read 50 mentor texts in my genre of choice to study character arcs.”
Marketing: you’ll need to get your work out there, whether or not you are ready for publication.
You will want to establish a social media presence to show your support of the children’s lit community. This is a good place to start if you have not yet done so. Be active once a week. That’s really all it takes, and don’t go down any rabbit holes while you are being “social.” Find industry professionals to follow, comment, like or heart – I think this part is most important, so people will know you are interested and engaged in the kid lit community. You’ll also get to know them through what they share, and this can rule in or rule out particular agents or editors you might have under consideration for submitting to. Share interesting articles. Search for hashtags that will relate to children’s books such as #childrensbooks, #kidlit, or #illustration (you can find inspiration in any type of art, really!). Visit social media in an intentionally professional way as a break from work on just that one day a week. I like to think of it as hopping out to put positive energy out into the world, to cheer others on, or to share your own joys. One day it’ll be to share your own good news about representation or new book deals! Invest now in building your future marketing base. It is free!
Participate in regular challenges. The Cuddlefish group tries to participate in #Colour_Collective. It’s still one of my favorites, because the guidelines are very loose. Just include the color of the week in your art that week, posting on Fridays around noon with this hashtag on Instagram or Twitter. Now though I list this is under marketing, don’t try to worry too much about how many likes or hearts it gets or does not get. It’s part marketing and part for you to be accountable in productivity. Try not to feel the need to garner external sources of validation. If you hit a high note and happen to get extra attention for a piece of art, study what features made it successful and work in that direction. And then don’t forget to go like/heart or share other artist posts.
When you are ready, submit to agents or editors you’ve researched. Depending on how many projects you have ready to go, you may choose to submit to one agent or editor every two to three months. Ideally, once you have submitted a project, you move on to the next project. Do not dwell on your single project. I used to do that. Refreshing that email inbox in hopes of a positive response to your submission is time wasted, my friend. Move on to something new.
Set 3: The Starry-eyed Dreaming….
Here are your reach goals. Choose whatever lofty goals you like to see reached, and write them down. If you are unpublished, then maybe you hope to be published, for example. Note that unlike in Set 1 and 2, some of these dream goals can be out of your control. You must wait for a publisher to offer a contract on your project. You must wait for an agent to choose to represent you. You must wait for the Caldecott Committee to choose your book. But you can choose any whimsical goal you would like to! It’s completely up to you! My randomly dreamy goal for 2021, for example, is to be paired up with a celebrity author. Just for fun. Just because!
And that is how you break down to write down your goals for 2021. Will you reach them all? Probably not! But that’s okay!! Will some of these goals be revisited next year? Quite possibly! And that, too, is okay. We are all on different timelines to success. But keeping a framework of what you’d like to see accomplished is one way to actually be on track to accomplish more.
Good luck, happy holidays, and wishing all of us a 2021 that is much more palatable than this year has been.
Join our Cuddlefish Gang members, Kaz Windness, Heather Brockman-Lee, & Stan Yan as they demo and compare Photoshop, Procreate, and Art Studio Pro. With witches as their subject, they share tricks to make your process faster and your illustrations better.
This is Cuddlefish Gang member, Kaz Windness‘s portion of an RMC-SCBWI skillshare virtual illustrators’ connect. How to create beautiful illustration palettes the fun and easy way, no color-theory know-how needed!
The Cuddlefish Gang: Together We Can Do AnyFIN! 