2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 9 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

We Interrupt This Silence for a Moment of Silence…

I lost one of my mother figures recently and it has been a slow process of mourning to regain my footing. I say one of my mother figures because my own mother isn’t in the picture; I need as many positive mother figures in my life to fill that vast and empty void as I can get. One is now missing and it has thrown my planets out of alignment. Everything is still rotating and revolving in my universe, just more wobbly than normal, trying to compensate for the hole, the empty space.

I promise to get back to regular posting soon, but for now I leave you with a poem that breaks my heart every time I read it.

There Are Four Wounds, Miguel

by E.A. Mares

The sand hill cranes rise, wheel

and turn above the Rio Grande. Their wings

flash in the sun and their wavering V

floats north and then is gone.

There is a fourth wound, Miguel,

the silence these birds leave in their wake.

The tree house in my father’s cottonwood

warps into something like a photograph

left too long in the sun.

all children having grown and gone.

There is a fourth wound, Miguel,

the silence of the tree house planks.

Once I saw a guitar burnt and blackened by fire.

The strings were gone, the bridge destroyed,

the neck and body only dark shadows.

There is a fourth wound, Miguel,

a silence where once there was music.

One by one the days slip into history,

and where there was a voice

there are only documents, evidence

that my daughter once walked this land.

Now she leaves footprints only in memory.

There are fours wounds, Miguel,

the wound of life,

the wound of love,

the wound of death,

the wound of silence.

Share this:

I’ve been hiding deep in my writer’s cave over the past few weeks, but this tragedy and the issues that have risen as a result have had a direct impact on all of us. I can assure you that my son is so loving and so empathetic that it is very difficult for him to see anyone in pain. He is bothered when babies cry. To say that he lacks emotional connection to the rest of us because he lacks the communication skills to express himself is just plain ignorance.

As always, Jess expresses this and shares more resources on her blog than I ever could, so I’ve reblogged her post on the subject here.

The Amazing Jerry Bennett – Illustrator of Magnificence – The Interview, Part Two

Welcome back to Part Two, the Question & Answer portion of our interview with illustrator and exotic beard cultivator, Jerry Bennett. (To catch up with the goodies you missed in Part One, click here.)

Valerie Lawson: Thanks for stopping by on your busy schedule, Jerry. Welcome back from the New Orleans Comic Con. I hope you enjoyed your time in The Big Easy.

Let’s get right to the questions, shall we?  You’ve recently been appointed to the position of Oklahoma SCBWI Regional Illustrator Coordinator; tell us about the role you play in Oklahoma SCBWI. How do you see that changing?

Jerry Bennett: That’s a good question, as I am still trying to get a feel for the position, since Oklahoma’s never had one before. It’s a tough pair of shoes to fill when the few and gifted group of illustrators we have are spread out across the state. My ultimate goal would be create a united group of Oklahoma illustrators that are able to encourage and fellowship together in our like-minded goals. I have a feeling the best way will be to do that through social media, so I’m in the process of building the best forms of internet communication for the illustrators to share what they are doing, and can help critique and promote each other’s work to strengthen and enable them to be the very best at what they do…I’m in the process of getting some events going that can be done for little expense and can yield valuable time of camaraderie and skill-building. One will be a sketchcrawl, where the artists will meet, whether it be a zoo, a mall or other scenic spot, and draw on location for skill-building, for reference researching or simply for fun. It can be a great chance to get to know the other illustrators and critique and encourage one another.

VL: That’s fantastic. Even though the full title of SCBWI is Society of Book Writers and Illustrators the focus seems to have been more on writers than illustrators in the past. Since you’ve become involved, there have already been exciting opportunities for illustrators at our annual spring conferences, including working with an art director on an art piece prior to the conference, just like one would for a book project. The feedback on that one in particular had to be amazing. How many novices get that kind of interaction? You’ve really helped to energize the illustrator portion of our group. I really look forward to seeing what great things you bring next.

Let’s go back to the beginning of your illustrious career. When did you know you wanted to be an illustrator? When did you start pursuing that seriously?

JB: I’ve always loved to draw. Always. It was in eighth grade, after trying to impress a girl by drawing a portrait of her, and all the gushing from everyone who saw it, made me realize that I could possibly do this as a career. [After the girl saw and loved the portrait, I chanced a request to a school dance with her. She said no.]

VL: I love getting to know someone better by probing into their childhood for embarrassing stories – what can I say, my father was a therapist and I have issues. So, here they come:

Thinking back to your childhood heroes /role models when you were a kid, who were they? What drew you to them? What powers/abilities did they have that you wished you could have? Do you still feel that way about them now?

JB: I see what you did there; ‘Drew’ you to them? 🙂

I was very heavy into knowing who made all my favorite movies. I was ‘drawn’ to the process of animation and special effects for the Star Wars movies as far back as elementary school! The power to bring anything, any creature, any ship, to life astounded me.

VL: What did you want to be when you were in grade school? What influenced this choice?

JB: I wanted to be a comic book artist! (All this time and nothing has changed!) Star Wars and Marvel Comics was my main source of influence. Still is.

Jerry’s Favorite Hero

VL: Are you saying you haven’t grown up, yet? Never mind.

 As a young kid, what was the worst trouble you ever got into? And what was your punishment?

JB: Me? I never got into trouble. 🙂

The worst I can think of was when my brother and I decided to spray graffiti with graphite on our neighbor’s wall. Our mom caught us, and told to clean it up and go next door to apologize. (We pretended we apologized, and quickly cleaned it up!)

VL: Even when you were getting into trouble you were drawing. Nice.

Were you ever afraid of the dark, of anything under your bed or in your closet?

JB: I think I was, but I also remember waking up under the bed often, so was I afraid of myself?

VL: Bah ha ha! Maybe you were battling monsters in your sleep.

 Tell me about your most memorable adventure you had with your friends outside of school.

JB: When I was with my high school choir in Hawaii, my best friend was having issues with his girlfriend, and he wanted me to fix things with her, and had locked me on our seventh floor balcony until I promised I’d help. I would do no such thing, and climbed over to the next balcony and escaped. Yes, that was crazy and dumb. I was able to enjoy the rest of the trip after that, when he realized I wanted nothing to do with their problems.

VL: Hawaii??!!! I don’t know what kind of budget your school had, but my only band trips were to…oh, wait, I quit band in my sophomore year. Man, I hope they didn’t go to Hawaii. Maybe I should have joined the choir. And that was some crazy spidey stunt climbing over the balcony, if I say so myself. Crazy. Peter Parker wold have been proud.

Did you ever have a clubhouse or secret place of your own? What did you do there?

JB: My brother and I made forts out of our beds with blankets. Does that count? (Yes, it does!)

VL: Oh! Love blanket forts! Definitely counts.

VL: Did you ever have to deal with a bully? How did you handle it?

JB: Ugh. I remember when I rode the bus, two kids wanted to look at my Swatch, and I was naive enough to show them. They never gave it back, as they got off the bus and pretended they didn’t have it. When I pressed, one got in my face, while the other got behind me on his knees to trip me as I was pushed over. Days passed as I fantasized what I wanted to do, but eventually resigned that my Swatch was gone, and I went on with life, thinking that they will end up in prison one day while I lived a better life than them.

VL: Wow, that was pretty was a pretty mature attitude. I probably would have made an ineffective voodoo doll or something.

Tell me about the most interesting place you have ever lived. What did you like/hate most about it?

JB: I was born and raised in Oklahoma City, and at the time, found nothing interesting about living here. It may be why I

Oklahoma City Gazette Cover – OKC Thunder Avenger Style

drew and played video games all the time: to get away from such a boring world I lived in. But now I can look with grown up eyes at all the awesomeness we have here now. The culture, the diversity, the friendliness that is a trademark for Okies.

VL: What was the worst job you ever had while going to school? Did your friends ever come by while you were working and embarrass you?

JB: In high school, I worked at Foleys (which is now Macys) as a sales associate, and I loved it! Friends did come by, but it was never embarrassing, though I was glad they never came by when I worked in handbags. I had always worked in the men’s and young men’s departments, then soon started working in all these women’s departments, housewares, and Godiva. I think they thought I was gay and better suited to work in ladies’ clothing. I didn’t mind it one bit. 🙂

VL: Ha! I can so see you selling the heck out of some ladies’ clothing. Best way to meet girls, too.

What is the most embarrassing thing one of your friends ever did to you?

JB: I remember in sixth grade, while stuttering and getting the nerve up to ask a girl to be my girlfriend, my brother, who was waiting impatiently to walk home with me, piped up and asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend. She politely refused, citing she already had a boyfriend.

VL: Who was your childhood best friend? Are you still friends today?

JB: Honestly, I think my brother was my best friend. He was killed in a plane crash over 17 years ago now. It was understandably difficult.

VL: Very understandably. He must have been a great guy.

What would be your dream illustrating assignment?

Star Wars Tee Design

JB: I’ve always wanted to draw a Spider-Man or Superman story, but now I’d throw in a Star Wars story into that mix, since Star Wars is a huge comic book property now, too! It would be amazing if I was approached by Scholastic to do a graphic novel series based on the Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins!

VL: Oh! Gregor the Overlander, that would be very cool as a graphic novel.

What has been your favorite book to read/book you’ve been most excited about over the past year?

JB: I have really enjoyed the graphic novels of Doug TenNapel. I’ve discovered and read several this year, with Cardboard being my favorite, but they all have such heart, humor and action, all packed in very well flowing panels. Check ’em out!

VL: Speaking of graphic novels, what are you currently working on?

JB: I’m multi-tasking, creating a sci-fi comic book, Nadir’s Zenith, creating several tee designs, selling prints of my work at comic book conventions, and deciding if I want to do another picture book for a local author. Something I’m very excited about is I’m writing, or more accurately, learning to write a graphic novel I will illustrate.

VL: I hear that you and your lovely wife are working on writing every week. If you’re putting in the work, then you ARE writing it! I am really looking forward to the graphic novel, Jerry. It sounds exciting. Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by!

Check out more of Jerry’s artwork here.

Become a fan of Jerry’s on Facebook here.

The Amazing Jerry Bennett – Ilustrator of Magnificence – The Interview, Part One

If you are ever anywhere near Jerry Bennett’s vicinity, you will know it when you hear his boisterous and unmistakable laughter. His is a personality that fills up a room and yet graciously makes plenty of space for others to share in his bright light. Jerry is the Regional Illustrator Coordinator for Oklahoma SCBWI and recently he did a fantastic presentation for our Tulsa group where he walked us through the illustration process of a picture book manuscript. One lucky soul had her words chosen at random for Jerry to bring to life right before our eyes as he talked with us about his process and his history of being an illustrator. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t write a story while telling others how I write a story.

That’s talent.

He should be talented; he started drawing at the age of two and never stopped. His dad worked at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City while he was growing up so some up his very first drawing were of airplanes. Then came Star Wars. He knew right away that would be a life-long obsession. As he is a part of the JediOKC, an Oklahoma City Star Wars fan club that does some awesome charity things, I guess you can say that was an accurate prediction. Other things influenced his art in his youth – Transformers, Spiderman, Garfield (really? Okay, he’s a fuzzy cat person). Then came a seminal moment when he realized that he might actually make art a career.

It all started with a girl.

It was eighth grade and he was shy. So, how to get her to notice him? By drawing, of course. He drew her portrait and everyone who saw it thought it was great. That gave him the confidence to ask her out.

Yes!

She turned him down.

No!

His first rejection. He took it in stride and thought about how he might actually be able to make money with his art. He was on his way to becoming an artist. He developed an even tougher skin in art school where he learned to accept critiques of his work weekly. Meanwhile he had begun working on t-shirt designs during high school, something he is still doing to this day. His top seller, the Star Wars/Ghostbusters mash-up “It’s a Trap” has sold over 3,300 shirts. Marvel even licensed him.

More recently, he’s done some illustrations for a self-published series of books, The Pirate Bride and its sequel, The Lost Crew. He has also done the illustrations for the comic series Nadir’s Zenith.

We were ecstatic that Jerry was going to share his talents with us.

He began by reading the text aloud.

The first step is to read the story.

Here is all he had to go on:

“Two hippos sailed a sky blue boat.

Jack wondered how they stayed afloat.

They only had one ruby oar,

Which made it hard to get to shore.”

(Thanks to Linda Mai for allowing me to share her text.)

You have to understand the plot, the characters, and the details before you can begin to illustrate. Jerry reads through the story several times. He’ll read it aloud with different inflections, using different voices – some funny or silly – to get a range of ideas. He said just as readers get images in their head when they read a novel, so do artists, yet artists are able to translate those images into illustrations.

One thing Jerry mentioned that made the inner editor in me cringe a bit was the reminder that if you’ve received the manuscript from a publisher, you won’t have much say in changing the text. You are stuck with the words you are given. Your job as the illustrator is how to best interpret the words and how to make the biggest impact on the story with images. You have to remember that in the author/illustrator partnership, you have two completely different artists, two owners sharing the same creation, yet working independently of each other.

As an illustrator of picture books, you should always be looking for ways to enhance the story. In the example that Jerry chose, there were hippos in a boat with only one oar. He decided Jack was the observer of the story and the illustration should focus on the hippos. He also thought that it would be funnier if the size of the oar and the boat were exaggerated compared to the hippos to make their predicament seem more outrageous. Nothing in the text said anything about what type of boat or how big it was – that was left up to him, so he took advantage of it to add something visually enticing for the reader.

The second step is to create a thumbnail layout.

For picture books, this is usually a layout of thirty-two pages of quick and simple sketches, just to place things. This can be in any format that works for you – a simple sheet of paper with thirty-two boxes marked out, a mock dummy with pages, etc. Jerry now does this digitally on his Wacom tablet. This purpose of the thumbnail sketching is to figure out the best possible way for the story to look. All aspect of the text is included as well as the imagery.

The third step is creating the individual pages of art for the initial layout.

When drawing free hand, he starts with the lightest sketching. Normally at home his work starts out on his Wacom tablet, then he moves it over to a pro tools program. His workstation is set up in an easel so he can draw naturally. Jerry usually listens to music, often movie soundtracks, while he is creating. The amount of time it takes him to complete a project can vary. For a comic, it takes him about a month while working eight to ten hours a day.

The fourth step is to send layouts to the editor.

If any changes need to be made, the editor will send it back with notes. He will rework it before the final layout. This step can be repeated as needed, just like with novel revisions.

Until at last everyone is happy with the end result.

Not bad for less than sixty minutes while giving a presentation, eh?

Stay tuned  for PART TWO, the Q & A with Jerry!