Dear Florida SCBWI Illustrators,

This June in Orlando there is an exciting opportunity for us all. Pat Cummings is teaching the Artists' Intensive. We are so fortunate to have her with us. She is not only an honored illustrator and author in her own right, but an experienced and motivating teacher. In addition to instructing at Parsons School of Art NYC, she runs her own 5 week Boot Camp where enrollees plow through their book projects and emerge with a proposal ready for submission to an editor. I don't know about you, but this is the sort of energizing and enrichment I dream about.

Well, we can't have Pat for 5 weeks - but we can each create our own personal one day boot camp by engaging with that project we each are working on or trying to conceptualize, and bringing it with us to the Orlando Intensive - preparing one spread (your advance "homework" ) for Pat's evaluation and input. Pat says she's a big fan of doing work you have a real stake in.

I am excited that her focus will be on "Narrative Content" - the page elements that affect the emotional impact and readability of a scene -- harnessing the power of scale, perspective, lighting, rhythm, pattern, texture, color......dynamic design, I'd call it.

The more we bring to any encounter, the more we take away. Our Orlando Intensives offer a setting where Florida illustrators at every level can come together, share our work, get a boost of insight from a pro -- recharge, renew, and advance our art and goals.

So - sign up now and show up June 4th with a finished spread from that prospective book you have on your drawing table. Learn from Pat how you can ratchet up its impact, make it work BETTER. (Only paper, pencil and eraser will be needed that day for improving your layouts.) Bring your book's thumbnails and dummy, too - plenty of time to take a stab at them before June 4. In the weeks after the conference, you will want to use your access/stickers to send your book off to our guest speaker editors and agents. This is a golden opportunity to make that book the very best it can be.

Linda Shute
Your Illustrator Co-ordinator
Contact me with your questions at lshute@me.com

You must also register for the Mid-Year Workshop to attend the Intensive.  Attendance limited to 25 people. Homework is required, and is posted here. See schedule.

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About Pat Cummings

In addition to the Coretta Scott King, the Orbis Pictus and the Boston Globe-Horn Book awards, Pat Cummings is the recipient of nine t-shirts, thirteen mugs, three hundred twenty-two ballerina drawings and one embroidered pillow from readers.  She is the author and/or illustrator of over 35 books, both fiction and non-fiction, from board books to young adult.  Her Talking With Artists series features prominent children's book illustrators.  She has worked as a producer and writer for Nickelodeon's Gullah Gullah Island and now teaches children's book illustration and writing at Parsons, The New School for Design and Pratt Institute. She serves on the boards of SCBWI, the Authors Guild and the Eric Carle Museum.   Pat lives in beautiful, downtown Brooklyn with her husband, Chuku Lee, the producer of Cover to Cover, a children's book talk show that she co-hosts with author/illustrator Sheila Hamanaka for Brooklyn Cable television.  

www.patcummings.com

About Linda Shute

Linda Shute has illustrated or written and illustrated 13 picture books and has done art and writing for the educational market. Some of her books have earned Parents' Choice Awards, a notable in the field of Social Studies, and have been on Library of Congress yearly book lists. She has taught Children's Book Illustration at Ringling College of Art in Sarasota and was guest artist/teacher for the 2008 SCBWI Orlando Illustrators' Intensive and Picture Book Workshop. 

She grew up in Miami, earned her art degree at FSU, and now lives on the Gulf coast, near Venice. She is pleased to serve as your Florida SCBWI Illustrators' Coordinator

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