Alice Ratterree | Children's Book Illustrator

Category: Process

  • Freelancing: What’s in it for me?

    Freelancing: What’s in it for me?

    There are plenty of resources out there about how to put a price tag on our work. Some metric is lying around out there that perfectly calculates time spent on a project, education and training, taxes (eek!), and just good old fashioned supply and demand (although the truth is, as illustrators, we all offer something completely unique that cannot be imitated, right? Well, at least that’s the life-long goal)

    But that’s not the question I’m asking.

    I want something a little more intangible, but a lot more valuable. I want something that I will live off of the rest of my life (that’s not imprinted with past presidents) I want learn something about myself and about my craft. I want to be charged creatively, and desire to go to work each day. I want to WANT to wake up early and stay up late getting it right. I want inspiration and challenge. I want to dive into the deeper recesses of myself and find a way to put a little part of my heart on to that paper that will be here (hopefully) long after I’m gone.

    Is that too much to ask of a client? Of course. But it is not too much to ask of myself.

    Whatever the task, it is up to us as illustrators to discover something new about ourselves and our work, our process, our creative energy. It is up to us to generate or seek out the source of inspiration for our projects.What can I learn from this experience? How can I grow as an artist? What would make this project creatively challenging for me? How can I learn to increase quality and decrease time spent, therefore being more EFFICIENT? When do I work best? When should I stop and rest? The path to this creative balance or nirvana, is loaded with questions. Questions that need to be explored, not necessarily answered once- but over and over again.

    Promo note: visit Diandra Mae fellow SCBWI member and illustrator. Her blog hosts “Sweet Squares”, a daily practice activity challenge similar to P3. I love it!

    Previous Petite Painting Project                                          Next Petite Painting Project

     

  • Materials

    Materials

    Materials, from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

    “The materials of art, like the thumbnail sketch, seduce us with their potential. The texture of the paper, the smell of the paint, the weight of the stone – all cast hints and innuendoes, beckoning our fantasies…But where materials have potential, they also have limits. Ink wants to flow, but not across just any surface; clay wants to hold shape, but not just any shape. And in any case, without your active participation their potential remains just that – potential…What counts, in making art, is the actual fit between the contents of your head and the qualities of your materials.”

    Promo note: visit Jessica Lanan, friend and fellow SCBWI mentee, who is also tackling the Petite Painting Project!

     

    P3 8/29/2012

    Previous Petite Painting Project                                   Next Petite Painting Project

     

  • Draw (and paint) what you see, not what you know

    Draw (and paint) what you see, not what you know

    This is the view from my kitchen window. I love seeing only the tops of houses. It was my favorite thing about city living too – dwelling a few floors up, no ground in sight, only rooftops, windows and sky. like being in your own almost weightless world.

    The trim around my window is white (Dover White, by Sherwin Williams to be exact) yet during daylight, it fades into charcoal shadow. My brain knows that it is still white, but my eyes challenge me to see the true relative color against the sunlit vista. I had to keep convincing myself to let my eyes lead, to push back against my head (like the schoolyard bully it can be) and go back for more pigment. Sometimes you just have to ask your brain politely to leave.

    P3 8/28/2012

    Previous Petite Painting Project                                            Next Petite Painting Project

  • Creativity while travelling

    Creativity while travelling

    The Petite Painting Project travelled last week. For seven days I was out of my usual creative space with two small children in tow. It was almost next to impossible, but I did it. The posting slowed, but I kept coming back to the paper each day and here’s what I learned. If I don’t do this in the morning hours, the work suffers. I loose my enthusiasm, energy and desire to be creative as the day wears on. Morning has always been a time of inspiration for me. I remember waking up as a child giddy with excitement about the acres of time that lay before me with endless possibilities of how to spend it.

    At the SCBWI conference this summer, Tony DiTerlizzi spoke about reaching back into our past to unearth what inspired us when we were children. What made 10 year old Alice get up early to play? What charged child Alice into creative action? In order to go forward, I have to go backward – back to the child self and rediscover that which makes me truly uniquely me. As my skills develop and my ability allows me to achieve success, I also become detached from that child who is the key to making it all work in the first place. Skill can be developed to near perfection, but if the youthful magic is lost, then what good is all the training?

    So for me, P3 must happen in the morning, when I am excited about the possibilities. One of my favorite books is Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s a tiny thin book packed with lessons and observations about how art gets made. In one passage, the authors discuss how painting a picture is an act of diminishing possibilities. A blank canvas holds the most opportunity. Anything can happen, and the moment that the first stroke is made, then thousands of options immediately are wiped out. Each successive stroke therefore eliminates possibility until the end, where the final stroke can exist in no other realm except within that painting. I suppose that is why joy cometh in the morning, why babies hold our dreams, and why wonder lies at the beginning of an uncertain journey.

    Last weekend, my grandmother was finally put to rest. The curtain was closed on her life and we all gathered and dwelled for a few days in the twilight of living things. Her home still holds picture frames and ticking clocks, china plates carefully selected, toys for grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her perfume, her pillow. I dream she is at the beginning of a new an uncertain journey where possibilities are endless.

    P3 8/18/2012
    In memoriam: Roselyn B Thomas

     Previous Petite Painting Project                                            Next Petite Painting Project

  • Adding Ink to Watercolor

    Adding Ink to Watercolor

    “Painting is poetry that is seen and not heard.” Leonardo da Vinci

    Ink and watercolor are an elegant and often ideal combination. I love the softness of the watercolor paint and the crisp black of ink. Both mediums respect and support the other’s strengths. The ink pen relieves the watercolor of so much detail duty and the paint is free to just be what it is – a wash of color. The paint color provides a foundation of support for the beauty of line. It also allows a faster work process! At least for me. Today’s schedule didn’t allow for much time on P3, so it turned out to be the perfect solution. And the strawberries were delicious.

    This weekend I will be testing out how well the Petite Painting Project travels.

     

    P3 8/16/2012

     

    Previous Petite Painting Project

  • Illustrating with love: lessons learned from Mark Doty and the 2012 SCBWI conference

    Illustrating with love: lessons learned from Mark Doty and the 2012 SCBWI conference

    I have a new favorite book: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty. Saying that this is my favorite book right now does not do justice to the experience I’ve had with this book, particularly at the timing of when I read it, which happened to be last weekend. Isn’t that a large part of what makes a book so meaningful to us – the timing they enter our lives? Although I just recently read this book, it  actually came to me almost a year earlier. In the fall of 2011, I attended the SCBWI Carolinas conference and met illustrator David Diaz, who was guest faculty providing intensives and portfolio reviews. In the midst of discussing my portfolio, he told me about a mentorship program that had recently been established at the SCBWI national conferences, and graciously invited me and fellow SCBWI Carolinas member and ARA, Bonnie Adamson, to join them for a weekend intensive the following month in his hometown of Carlsbad, California (which I might add -like most places in California- is full of beauty, to this east coast native) My favorite question is “What was the last book you read?” So I asked this of David, and he handed me Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. On the plane trip home I started the first few pages and quickly realized that this little book’s size was deceiving. It was intense and required more from me than I had after a weekend of non-stop discussion on the illustration and art-making process. So when I returned home, I placed it on the bedside dresser drawer with the mental “to read next” note. There it remained for two and a half seasons.

    Fast forward to this summer: While packing to attend the SCBWI National Conference in LA, and it occurred to me that this book still sat in the drawer. It of course should rightfully be returned it to its owner, whom I would be seeing at the event. Ashamed about neglecting my homework, I gave myself one last task: READ THIS ON THE PLANE. So while I began this little book out of a mixture of obligation, guilt, but also the genuine desire to get my head into a place of reflective preparedness for the weekend, Doty’s prose wrapped itself around me I received every drop like a warm sponge. What begins as a moment in a museum, where the author is captivated by a particular painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem (Still Life with Oysters and Lemon) becomes a philosophical journey into the intimacy we share with objects, the permanence and impermanence of earthly pleasures. By exploring the dutch masters of still life painting, Doty captures the essence of why we are drawn to still life. At one point he refers on the painters love affair with light – and ultimately, that all painting starts with love. That stuck with me, particularly in light of the many notes I heard at the conference that weekend.

    There was much talk of love inside of our work, whether that be as a writer or an illustrator. EB Lewis told us to bring to the table ourselves – our own souls and experiences, what we LOVE. Draw what you love and what you know. During his breakout session, he offered a short documentary by National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones, in which the prevailing mesaage was about how to recognize the beauty around us. The extraordinary lives in the ordinary. “By celebrating what is right with the world, we are given the energy to fix what is wrong.” Author Ruta Sepetys asked us, “What are you willing to give in order to create? What are you longing for? What do you hide?”  If we are bold enough to lay bare our broken selves, then “the wind will blow through our hollow places, and someday may cool and heal a reader.” So much courage is needed to expose love and fear in order to create, but without, I’m not sure we can be successful in connecting with our listeners, our viewers. As the final keynote speaker, Gary Schmidt instilled in us this most important lesson: You will never learn to love art well until you learn to love what art mirrors better….the world. Love the world.

    While travelling last weekend, I received the call that my grandmother had died. What remains?
    Permanence. Impermanence. Love and objects.

     

    P3 8/15/2012

     

    Previous Petite Painting Project                                                          Next Petite Painting Project

     

  • Patience with Foliage

    Patience with Foliage

    It is really hard to have patience when trying to capture foliage. There so much out there with such variety of distinct personalities that if that is the only subject you focused on, you would have enough work to tackle over the course of multiple lifetimes.

    I didn’t really have the patience this morning with it, but I showed up. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow…

    P3 8/13/2012

     

    P3 8/14/2012

     

    Previous Petite Painting Project                                         Next Petite Painting Project

     

  • The flower keeper

    The flower keeper

    Our front yard hosts an enormous, borderline obnoxious, hydrangea bush that sports hearty bulbs every year. In addition, the back yard invites our neighbor’s hydrangeas to escape through the fence and live with us for a season. My mother in law has this magical ability to pick these flowers. Well, let me clarify that, because I can certainly cut a hydrangea. But the ones she cuts last. Mine wilt, wither and are just plain sad looking after a few days. Why is this? I don’t do anything different. Same scissors, same plant, same water, same vase. What is her secret? Believe me, we have actually had lengthy discussions about this. It is just one of her many domestic super powers.

    The first time she gifted us with her hydrangea-preserving talent was when I was in the hospital giving birth to my daughter. She was staying here with our oldest. That was over wo years ago and here they remain on my mantle, suspended in time.  A few weeks ago, she clipped another bunch, and they still look like they are living right on the vine. I am so grateful for these small gestures. Whenever I return home after she has helped with the children, I come home to complete peace. The children are always groomed and well fed, manners have improved, some sort of creative activity has been shared, the outdoors has been explored, a new skill level (reading) has been achieved, and to just boot, the laundry is folded. She departs (sadly for me) and things begin to slowly unravel. The whining creeps back in, I procrastinate doing the laundry, my daughter forgets what a brush is, and I cave in to the television requests while throwing a frozen pizza in the oven.

    But the flowers remain.

    P3 8/12/2012
    P3 8/11/2012

     

    Previous Petite Painting Project                                                 Next Petite Painting Project

     

  • Petite Painting Project

    Petite Painting Project

    The prevailing lesson I walked away from the conference was ths:
    I must spend less time on more drawings.

    P3 8/7/2012

    I have been agonizing over individual pieces, trying o make them p.e.r.f.e.c.t. when I just need to keep my hand moving daily in a forward direction. The portfolio pieces will arise out of this daily exercise. Of course I have heard this over and over again, but I have fallen into the trap of pushing my creative activity into only times of extreme inspiration or an actual job deadline. Last year I had to create 3 coloring book projects on a very tight schedule. And what I found was that drawing over150 pairs of hands and feet really does pay off.

    Therefore, inspired by Melissa Sweet‘s breakout session from the 2012 SCBWI LA Convention, I have invented the Petite Painting Project, or PPP, or to be very efficient (because that’s what I’m going for) P3. One small painting a day for an entire year. Yes, 365 days. Not necessarily picture book or portfolio material, just whatever happens to be around me.

    P3 8/8/2012

    From life. My life. And no more than an hour spent on it. P3 doesn’t end there…I must also create one drawing a day (start to finish) and if time allows, a collage or work on a more long term piece. This must all take place in addition to the current commissions in my cue.So how do I do this with children? Well, they are just going to come along on the journey with me. P3 happens with the children – a family activity. And guess what? After three days, they’ve come to expect and joyfully anticipate it. Even ask for it. We are having a blast. Yesterday we went out and bought a new array of materials, and I think they were more receptive to the errand because it was something for them as well.

    P3 8/9/2012

    Daily Drawing and collage take place in small spaces of times that occur throughout the day, which I’ve discovered there are a lot of! To illustrate this point, I will touch back on a keynote speech I heard this weekend from Deborah Underwood, author of The Quiet Book, and her message was, appropriately, The Power of Quiet…

    She spoke of a dancer who was trying to master a difficult routine. The pace was frantically fast. The dancer practiced over and over, but she still was left with little improvement in her stamina. She approached her teacher with this problem. The master teacher simply said, “Find the places of rest” Of course by now the dancer was extremely frustrated. “Are you kidding me? Did you just see what I was doing?” And the teacher said, “Swing your arm” So the dancer started to swing her arm. “What happens when you change direction?” the teacher asked. And the dancer understood. In the small space between those two directions, there was a moment, however brief, of rest. She was able to dance the dance. Rather than a marathon of speed, it became a series of resting points. P3 helps me throughout the day, serving as my resting place in the midst of these late summer days with young children.

    P3 8/10/2012

    So that leaves commissions and long term projects to take place during rest time and in the late evening after bedtime. But by then, I’m ready. I’ve had moments of daily practice to get me inspired about tackling the bigger tasks. Thank you, Deborah Underwood, Melissa Sweet and SCBWI!

    Click here for another post about the 2012 SCBWI National Conference in LA

    Next Petite Painting Project blog post

  • Interview with Holly Hughes

    Interview with Holly Hughes

    Today I’m featured in an interview with writer/blogger Holly Hughes, whom I met at the SCBWI conference last year. Not only am I thrilled and honored that she wanted to highlight my work, I’m especially thankful for the thoughtful questions she put forth allowing me to sit back and reflect on process, inspiration and how life has lead me to becoming an illustrator. Check it out at  http://writerhughes.wordpress.com

    Enjoy!