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\nIt’s the first Sunday of the month (happy November!), so I’m featuring the artwork of a recent grad today. Her name is Amanda Moeckel<\/a><\/strong>, and she tells us all about herself below and shares more art, so let’s get right to it. <\/p>\n
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Amanda<\/font><\/strong>: My mom told me recently that my first word was \u201clight,\u201d so apparently my obsession with things that glow began long ago. Earlier this year, I graduated from School of Visual Art\u2019s MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program, and I completed this children\u2019s book dummy as a thesis. It\u2019s called Only the Good Dreams<\/em>, and it\u2019s based on a ritual I had before bed, where I would ask my stuffed animals for protection from bad dreams. You can see the extended trailer\/promo video here<\/a><\/strong>. For this book dummy, I worked in acrylics and chalk pastels on illustration board. I\u2019ve recently gotten into silkscreening, though, so I think that process will make its way into my work more and more. It helps me think more graphically with shape and line, as I tend to load up on texture. Thank you so much for featuring my work, Jules. I\u2019ve been a fan of this blog for a long time, and it was a huge reason I went back to school. THANK YOU for all that you do! Note for any new readers: 7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. New kickers are always welcome. <\/p>\n If illustrators thank me in posts like this, I tend to just skip that part so that the focus can be on them, not me. But it makes me happy that 7-Imp was one reason Amanda decided to study illustration, so I left that. (P.S. You can see even more of her work here<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n As for kicks, I was prepared to type up seven separate kicks, but then I read this<\/a><\/strong> from author-illustrator Maira Kalman<\/a><\/strong>, which is so lovely and so perfectly aligned with the spirit of the kickin’ we do here every Sunday that I think I’ll leave it at that. Please do read that. (It’s not even very long, and so it won’t be terribly time-consuming.) <\/p>\n Profoundly grateful. For the earth and the sea. The sun and the stars. The people, the dogs, the trees, the fish, the buses, the paintings, the coffee, the music and the unstoppable energy of all of those who are alive.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yep. That about covers it. <\/p>\n What are YOUR<\/font><\/strong> kicks this week? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Click to enlarge) It’s the first Sunday of the month (happy November!), so I’m featuring the artwork of a recent grad today. Her name is Amanda Moeckel, and she tells us all about herself below and shares more art, so let’s get right to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seven-good-things-before-monday","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nGrad school changed the way I work in that I became a more expressive, less realist, painter. Trying to ignore all my previous traditional training in photorealism took me into interesting and liberating territory. It was hard to break free from something people have responded well to, but I learned that being a good illustrator was much more than being able to paint accurately. There is a great illustrator in my class named Elaheh Taherian, and I remember asking how she knows when her drawing is finished, since it’s not based at all on realism. That’s when I realized that “real” is only one of many litmus tests of “good.” Designing one’s own “real” and using that as a standard seems to be the mark of a true creative. Frank Viva<\/a><\/strong> comes to mind. Or Mary Blair<\/a><\/strong>. I\u2019m still stretching to find my \u201creal,\u201d but I think I\u2019m getting there.
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\nBeing in this program also helped me find ways to bring meditation, something that I\u2019ve always seen as separate from art, into my daily art practice. It helps when I\u2019m beginning a project — or stuck somewhere in the middle. It helps me come up with ideas and make better decisions about mark-making, colors, and composition. For the book dummy, I used a visualization technique to structure my book. I began by choosing a piece of music. I felt Chopin would be best, because of his dreamy and unpredictable song structure. I found a song that captured the feel of the story I wanted to tell (it\u2019s the one I use in the video), and I played it over and over as I laid out the flow of the book. I penciled the images out in a tiny little paper dummy, the motion, figure placement, open spaces, and busy spaces determined by the flow of the song. The final dummy remained pretty true to those initial marks and compositions.
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\nMy biggest influences are probably the fantastical films from my childhood, and that\u2019s probably why I\u2019m drawn to dreamy stories. Being a child of the ’80s, I always come back to The Last Unicorn<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, The Neverending Story<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, The Dark Crystal<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, and Labyrinth<\/a><\/strong>. As an adult, I discovered Harry Clarke<\/a><\/strong> and Kay Nielsen<\/a><\/strong>, who clearly influenced my favorite books as a child — fairy tales illustrated by the Grahame Johnstone sisters<\/a><\/strong>.
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\nStories I hope to illustrate in the future would be ones based on allegory, symbolism, or metaphor. Fables would be great. My dream would be something as important as The Giving Tree<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. Or narrative imaginary tales, like Aaron Becker\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> Journey<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. So the plan is to get my work out and hopefully be assigned stories like that. I try to set aside time every week to develop my own stories as well — and have a few infant ideas in the works. <\/p>\n
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\nRight now I\u2019m working on an entry for the Tomie dePaola Award for the SCBWI Winter Conference. Also, I\u2019m researching art reps and publishing houses and putting together my wish list! I recently had a full-page illustration in Playboy<\/em> magazine [below], and I\u2019m working on an editorial portfolio as well.
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\nIf there\u2019s one thing I took from grad school, it\u2019s that the age of being just<\/em> a children\u2019s book illustrator or just<\/em> an editorial illustrator or just<\/em> a fine artist is fading away. I find this exciting! While I\u2019m keeping my eyes on the children\u2019s book prize, I want my hands in ALL that delicious stuff. <\/p>\n
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\nAll artwork used by permission of Amanda Moeckel. <\/em><\/p>\n
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