SCBWI Canada East Ottawa Conference - Getting It Together

In the last days before a conference, just as I'm mulling over what to add or move from my portfolio it happens.  Never enough to take along new things I've done over the past year or so, perhaps some overlooked images that now seem just right to take along, as the time to depart draws near, I am gradually overwhelmed by the mad urge to make something new.  This time is no different.  Suddenly dissatisfied I just KNOW that if I take the time and focus... a new image will be the result.  Definitely worth putting in the portfolio.

Summer, as always, melted away into small cracks of time between the bright mosaic of family time, new vistas and activities away from the drawing board.  Plans to work steadily at new images seeped into these same cracks.  I tell myself they morphed into rich ideas, fertilized by all the new sights and sounds.  I hope so.

A little wiser this time around, I opted to work (mostly) with images I already felt strongly about, seeing if I could make them sing - in colour.

If you'll be at the conference, do wave across the room.  And when you bump into me with my portfolio under my arm, it will be fine if you ask: so what's new?

This week's Illustration Friday challenge word was water  with an accompanying quote by Rabindranath Tagore (not in front of me, so I'll paraphrase to the extent memory allows) to the effect that you cannot cross the ocean by standing and looking at the water.

A desire to be elsewhere, to expand one's horizons, to adventure - so many reasons for stepping in to the water and then figuring out HOW to journey in it, through it, and perhaps finding ease in just being IN the water .

Parenthood is such an adventure - there's no way of knowing what being a parent means until you ARE one.  And even then, you discover more every day. 

And the image, as it's setting is watery, seemed doubly appropriate.  A sketchbook image, the colour layers added with mottled acrylic surfaces scanned and manipulated digitally.