I've been thinking about the theme for this week's Illustration Friday theme "tea". This popped into my head last night when I went to bed. It took all I had not to get up right then and do it, so I did it first thing this morning. It's a quick snapshot so quality isn't the best, but it's titled: Green Tea. It feels good to be doing Ill. Friday's again after not doing them for a while!

I kind of posted back-to-back pretty quickly so you might want to check out my post from last night. Just some promotional things that work for me and keep me busy. You can read it here.

Here's my final illustration that I posted half way done the other day. I really like it when books have a full page illustration and the other page has just text and pulled out a little image from within the page or book.

Today is Monday and I've named Monday's "Marketing Monday." I've been doing this for several months and it has really helped me keep up with promotion. Usually Mondays are a little rough on me creatively because it's the start of a new week, and usually I've worked all weekend on some kind of deadline, so I could use a little break.

Last week I mailed out a postcard and packet to some clients and prospects (packet went to places I'd really like to work with). It's been fun tracking them through my stats and see who liked what they saw through the mail.

Today I updated my listing on some online portfolio places:

Portfolios.com (it has paid for itself but I haven't gotten any work from it in several months, so I'm not renewing this year)
Childrensillustrators.com(gotten a lot of work from it so I'm renewing)
Theispot.com (signed up the first of the month and already got a job that almost paid for the year subscription)
Folioplanet (just updated my bio listing, I got one job from this and some traffic here and there, I'm thinking about upgrading and adding a little icon for more exposure)
Coroflot (got one pretty big design job from it a few days after I signed-up but that's it so far, but it's free)
The Digital Artist (I get clicks every now and then, but no jobs, but again, it's free)

I'm thinking about advertising on Altpick.com. My accountant wants me to spend, spend, spend this year for a bunch of write offs so I feel I have another good reason to try it out. They don't have much as far as children's illustrators up there...yet, but I emailed a girl who's on it and she said she's gotten some work so "go for it."

I also made some lists (thanks Mom for passing down that trait) and bought a couple of domain names that redirect to my site.

Promotion pays off for me. Just last week I got 2 jobs as a result from childrensillustrators.com Don't know how much I can say about either one of these, but I'm illustrating 4 postage stamps (how cool would it be if I receive a letter with my stamp on it) and the other is a job with a breakfast product company (I'm not saying names, but you can make great "treats" out of them).

Promotion can be a challenge, but sometimes you just have to buckle down and focus. My wheels are always spinning. If you haven't read it already, take a look here for some promotion tips.

I was digging around today for and old disk and ran across these 2 images. These were my very first clay illustrations done for school about 8 years ago. The first one is from a children's book we had to illustrate and layout (obviously it's Adam and Eve, the Book of Genesis). I used a clay that wouldn't dry out. I thought it was great but the problem was...it wouldn't dry out and I couldn't bake it so when I painted it, I'd get indents from my paint brush.



This one is from the same class and we had to create an invitation to something. I decided to do an invitation to an Elvis convention. I have no idea why but this was the front of it.



I'm glad I've come a long way!

Sing a song of sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,
Oh wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?
The king was in his counting house counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose!

I've been doing al lot of sketching of nursery rhymes lately and this immediately popped into my head when I found out "song" was the theme for this week's Illustration Friday. It is not totally finished yet, but the most important part representing "song" is, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. i hope to finish it up this weekend and I'll post the final

I've been working in Painter for about a year now and could never figure out one problem I kept having until now. I don't know if I could even explain it but the magic wand tool wasn't capturing all the pixels I needed it to, so I finally figured out a way to make it work and the result gives me a more painterly look that I've wanted. It takes a little longer to draw out and get my layers right before painting but I'm finally getting the result I want without touching up the problem in Photoshop.

Check out this "little" link a friend sent me the other day!

A simple clay illustration for Illustration Friday.

Working on a new postcard promo to get out the door this month. Still not 100% sure I'm happy with the illustration samples on the back though. I've ordered a few sample postcards from the USPS so I can test the color and hopefully they will look good and I can send them out! I've also updated my site (again). I wasn't happy with the navigation look I did a few weeks back and I wanted to add an illustration on every page.

I received this in the mail yesterday from Heather. It's an original and it's my all time favorite piece of hers. I'm going to find just the right spot for it in the house so everyone can see it. She has a few other originals still for sale. Thanks Heather, I love it!

Here's a little worker bee I made as a clay addition to my portfolio.

And I've been tagged by Paula so here I go...

Four Jobs I’ve Had
• Sales Associate for Hallmark store (where I fell in love with illustration)
• Graphic Designer at a big Christian Publisher
• That's it before full-time freelance illustrator and Mom

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over
• Monsters Inc. (and thanks to the Woog, I do!!)
• National Treasure
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Good Fellas (is it weird that I'm a children's illustrator and this is my favorite movie?)

Four Places I’ve Lived
• Denver, CO
• Mesquite, TX
• Birmingham, AL
• Huntsville, AL
(all when I was a kid)

Four TV Shows I Love
• Flip This House (I'll be a flipper one day!)
• The Office (US version)
• My Name is Earl
• American Idol (at the moment)
(all seen after they've aired thanks to TiVo)

Four Places I’ve Vacationed
• Orlando, FL
• Gatlinburg, TN
• The Biltmore
• San Antonio, TX

Four of My Favorite Dishes
• Don't really have one...let alone four

Four Sites I Visit Almost Daily
• My stats
• My fellow PBJ blogs
• Google
• Blogger if I update my blog

Four Places I Would Rather Be Now
• I'm home so that's where I like to be. It's where I'd rather be when I'm somewhere else :)

My father-in-law left me his camera collection and I was finally able to find the right shelves I wanted and display some of my favorites. These are just a few of them, I have about 100 more to find a place for! Each one has the camera name and it's value on a little hang tag that corresponds to a cataloged list. It was neat to go through them all. I wish he would have displayed them instead of keeping them in boxes, but I know he'd be proud that I've chosen to display them now.

I had to seriously talk myself into this phone and had planned on waiting until May so I could get it a little cheaper, but I was surprised with it yesterday. Since nearly all my job opportunities come to me via email, this was a good choice to still be connected while I'm out and about. Since I'm a Mac person, the PC interface will take some time to figure out.