Welcome!

This is the blog home of #kidlitart, a live Twitter chat Thursdays at 9:00 pm Eastern, for children's book illustrators, picture book authors, author/illustrators and friends. Check back weekly to read transcripts, comment on previous chats and suggest topics for upcoming chats.


Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Call For Topics

Howdy #kidlitart-ers! We're about to hit the end of our calendar of topics, so it's time to hear what you'd like to talk about on our weekly chats. I think we've established a few favorites, so we will definitely be revisiting : Postcard Boost, Show N Tell, and Art Crushes as well as checking in for the #PBDummy Challenge.

Do you have specific topics on craft you'd like to discuss? Promotion? Research? Publishing? Agents? Anything and everything to do with being an illustrator in the children's publishing industry is up for grabs. Give us your ideas in the comments, and we'll see what we can do to meet your needs.

-Diandra

p.s.- And remember! We're still looking for a Spring header for the blog. If you're interested in contributing, here are the guidelines: http://kidlitart.blogspot.com/p/header-faq.html

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

#kidlitart Round-Up

There's quite a bit going on for #kidlitart right now. Hopefully those of you participating in the Postcard Boost have mailed your postcards out. April 3rd was our unofficial deadline. If you haven't yet, I hope our Mailing Lists chat helped you create your resource and you'll be mailing out soon.

We had a wonderful Show-N-Tell chat last week! I was so excited to see everyone's works-in-progress. We will definitely be doing it again. You can read the transcript for that chat here



And despite what some of you may be seeing out your front door, Spring is here and we'd like to celebrate by updating our blog banner. Our current lovely bit of illustration was created by the lovely Nancy Colle (Interview here) If you'd like to show your #kidlitart spirit and share a piece of your work, here are the requirements:
 1) Create an illustration/design that is kidlitart-centric.
2) The name 'kidlitart' has to be a central image.
3) The dimensions of the piece should be (no wider than) 1050px x 150px
4) Be sure you save the final image to 72-100 dpi. No need to have a hi-res image online.
5) Be sure your name/initials are somewhere (discreetly)on the image.
6) Email the header image to kidlitart@gmail.com. We'll sort through and when we choose a new header for the season, we'll contact you and send questions so we can feature you in a blog interview.
7) If you'd like to create a new header for the Twitter account for @KidLitArt, resize your submitted illo to fit the 1252 x 626 size requirement.


Also, our topic for this week's chat is a #PBDummy Check-In. A couple of weeks ago we entered into Step Five: Full-Size Sketches. Hopefully you've moved into this stage after working out any kinks in your storyboard. Let us know if you are facing obstacles or have questions about where to go from here Thursday night at 9pm EST. 

That's it for now. As always, if you have any questions, shoot Russ, Renee, and I a tweet, or fill out our new handy-dandy form over in the sidebar.

Thank you for being a part of the #kidlitart community. It's a thriving place because of you!

-Diandra