Meet our mentors from our
Mentorship Program 2018-2019
Here’s what Illustration Portfolio
Mentors - Amy Hevron and Erik Brooks have to say.
Tell
us a little bit about what you are working on now and your current projects.
Amy:
Currently I’m illustrating MOON BABIES, a picture
book written by debut author Karen Jameson. I am also in the process of
revising a few non-fiction picture book manuscripts
Erik: I
just recently finished two board book illustration projects and I am currently
working on some technical exercise drawings for a climbers/endurance athletes
training guide (to be published by Patagonia Books). The later is bit of a
departure from picture book illustration, but jobs like this help to fill in
the occasional gaps.
Later
this summer I’ll be diving into a new picture book project and hope to be
making submissions on two new picture book projects of my own and my first
attempt at a graphic novel. I have ongoing weekly commitments as well to my
local newspaper comic strip, Welcome to Harts Pass :)
How
does being a mentor influence and inform your work and why do you do it?
Amy:
In my author/illustrator journey, I have benefited
greatly from mentors in this industry. So, I look forward to returning the
favor and helping guide others on their path. In reviewing other people’s work,
it helps me to evaluate my own work more objectively.
Erik: Being
a mentor is a lot like how I feel when giving elementary schools workshops
and/or presenting to kids. A thoughtful consideration of my own process,
habits, inspirations, faults and successes always becomes a great mirror for
comparing how I actually work vs how I could be working.
Inevitably, this ends up helping both the student and the teacher, as the
renewed understanding of my own approach makes me better too! As a certified
K-12 art instructor, these mentorship opportunities also nicely engage that
part of my brain that at one time wanted to be a teacher.
What
are some challenges you have encountered in your writing/illustration journey?
How did you manage to survive through them and achieve success?
Amy:
I’ve experienced rejections, book projects falling
through, and book projects I had to pass on. With each challenge, I look for
the learning moment. These take aways have helped me focus my portfolio,
improve my writing, and better my understanding for when I’m not a fit for a
project. In challenging times, I lean on supportive family and friends who
encourage me and love everything I do not matter what. I’ll seek out
inspiration for new stories or characters by walking around the neighborhood or
going to a museum. Staying positive and continuing to create help me to push
through challenges.
Erik: My
first book was an IndieBound Pick-of-the-Lists, a Publisher’s Weekly “Flying
Start.” Six months later (unbeknownst to me and shortly after I’d earned my
first royalty check) the publisher filed for bankruptcy. The book/career with a
fairly auspicious beginning was quickly DOA with a first title no longer
available for distribution - and to this day the publisher (18 years later) still
owes me money and only recently returned the rights.
It
was with a small publisher, I was 28 and totally naive about the business, and
I was also just maybe a little too “nice” about getting the rug pulled out from
under me. I rolled with the punch. I kept doing school visits, and I started
working on those next book ideas. I’d never expected to have a first book
actually sell that well, so I simply persisted - in a manner of speaking - and
just tried to work and do what seemed like the next “right thing.”
Ten
years and 14 books later, a similar “momentum buster” happened again when
Marshall Cavendish sold its picture book list to Amazon Publishing — and
independent bookstores dropped a book of mine that had been selling well only
three months into its release. Totally out of my hands. Just another “luck of
the draw” situation, but one again with definite financial consequences!
Anyway,
this is an unpredictable journey with many ups and downs. The beauty is that
you have the ideas and you create the next thing that you are trying to sell —
be that an entire book or a portfolio update that will hopefully catch an
editor’s eye. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but on a certain
level, the ball is always in your court to keep on forging ahead.
As
another hedge against the ups and downs, I also spend at least part of almost
every day doing non-writing/illustrating things. I parent, I coach, I
volunteer, I visit school and libraries, I plot other ideas like starting a
hat-making business or a collective studio art space in town… Whatever the
case, I move some energy and effort around to other things. I know that my
“Job” is to write and to illustrate the best books that I can possibly make,
but it certainly helps when there are other outlets for success and failure.
Sometimes I’m a better coach or parent or teacher than I am an illustrator, but
that positive uptick feeds itself along the line eventually back to other
things.
What
advice would you give to your beginner self who is just starting out to make a
creative career?
Amy:
Enjoy this time in your career while you’re just
starting out. Experiment and play and relish that no one’s watching yet. Take
classes to improve your skills or learn new ones. Join SCBWI to meet peers who
are at a similar place in their career journey and stay connected with them.
Limit social media while you’re creating. For me, it’s dampens my creativity
rather than energizes it. Know that you’ll have good creative days and blah
creative days. Try to make the most of whatever kind of day it is.
Erik:
Rejection and some failure are definitely part of the game, but I got used to
that quickly and kept plugging along. To my younger self: I could have sought
to find a better “team” to have my back or help to improve my work (outside of
my lovely wife and a few consistent editors along the way) - an illustration
community, an agent etc.. Yes, I jumped in and have figured out a LOT in 18
years, and I also take a certain amount of pride in publishing 26+ books and
making this work without an agent or closer group— but it IS a little harder
and perhaps a little more isolating this way.
As
a second thought, and I lucked into this myself, learn some computer skills
applicable to design and layout programs. This is perhaps a given these days
and part of every current illustrator’s worldview, but I know that there are at
least a few colored pencil and watercolor artists out there who still don’t
know much about scanning or color correction or how to use technology to
capture your artwork and put your best foot forward for submissions. I spent 18
months in a graphic design department learning on the job with the Adobe
Creative Suite and InDesign just prior to my first attempt at writing and
illustrating for kids. My first book submissions were in the era of faxing sketches
and photocopied book dummies at Kinkos, but it all changed pretty quickly with
the advent of the internet. Those skills that I learned with Photoshop and
Illustrator… I still use them almost every single week. The transition to sharp
looking PDFs, creating my own promo postcards, website portfolio, etc. were all
made SO much easier given that time and fluency spent on the computer. I still
prefer painting and drawing on paper, but whenever I want to mix it up with
digital media — or have a publisher asking me to make corrections digitally — I
am totally up to the task.
For more details of the mentorship program
check here.
Amy Hevron is
an illustrator, designer, and children’s book author living in Seattle,
Washington. She is a two-time winner of the Portfolio Honor Award from the
SCBWI. She illustrated Trevor written
by Jim Averbeck coming in 2018. And her author/illustrator debut Dust Bunny Wants a Friend arrives in 2019. Prior
to focusing on children’s books, Amy worked as an art director at design
firms and game companies. She is represented by Kirsten Hall of Catbird Agency.
Amy’s portfolio can be viewed at www.amyhevron.com.
Erik Brooks is the author and/or illustrator of many books,
including the Washington State Book Award winner, POLAR OPPOSITES, and the
CBC/IRA Children’s Choices award winner, THE PRACTICALLY PERFECT PAJAMAS. His
most recently illustrated board book, IF I WERE A WHALE, will soon be joined by
two additional titles. From his home in Winthrop, WA, Erik also writes and
draws a weekly comic strip for his local paper, visits schools and libraries
around the country, and plays in the woods like a wolverine! View Erik’s
portfolio at www.erikbrooks.com
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