I just came back from spending the weekend in Fitchburg, MA for the annual New England Regional SCBWI conference. As always, it was an inspiring and educational trip.
The picture at the top of this article is the poster I drew for the competition this year. There were lots of great entries and some talented artists and friends garnered some awards. Congrats!
I got to meet and re-meet many cool artists. Some of them were folks I already knew from Twitter, and it was great to speak to them face to face for the first time. Be sure to check out their work and their websites. They are all swell people!
I hope I’m not forgetting anyone. If I did, I apologize – there were sooo many people there!
I also attended workshops taught by Matt Phelan (“Writing the Graphic Novel”), Jennifer Morris (“Photoshop Techniques for Illustrators”), and Frank Dormer (“Thinking Before You Draw”). All of them were excellent and very educational. I also had brief run-ins with some talented writers like Mitali Perkins and Cynthia Lord. They are very kind and gracious ladies.
This was also a special conference for me because I taught my own workshop for the first time. It was called “10 Ways Artists Can Improve Their Online Presence”. I mostly talked about online marketing, and my love of Twitter. :) (Seriously, if you’re not on Twitter yet, what are you waiting for?) I hope to make another blog post soon about some of the specific topics and tips I talked about. Thank you to everyone who showed up and chatted with me at the workshop!
Now, with the conference over, it’s time to take all the advice, critiques, and inspiration and start revamping my artwork.
If you’ve never attended a conference like this, I highly recommend it. The NESCBWI conference in particular is always very good. I’m looking forward to next year. If you come, look for me and say hi.
