Visual Mentorship

At the end of April I started a visual mentorship with E.B. Lewis.  A life changing opportunity to say the least!  My art has taken a Paul Bunyan sized step forward (if you are from Minnesota you know just how big that is).  After I return from the SCBWI Conference in LA I will write a proper blog about my experiences, growth and on going mentorship, but for now...

I know my "art" friends know how much work is involved in be creative.  Unlike the rest of the world, Art friends know we don't just sit around and color and draw all day.  Illustration is a lot of work.  Really hard work.  One thing E.B. has helped me with is how I see the world.  It turns out, I wasn't thinking enough.  I found my first assignment to be immensly challenging.  Stuck inside my adult brain, I couldn't get past not wanting to disappoint, living up to E.B. standards and what if I misunderstood the assignment? My artisic life would be over. Dead. Done. Gone. *Poof*!  Thanks to E.B., my critique group (girls, you know who you are!), my daughters and my husband, my anxiety has been supressed and my brain has reverted back to being a six year old child...almost.

As an adult, I thought I wanted to go back to being a child so I didn't have to think about anything.  I was tired of worrying all day and wondering how I was going to fix the entire world and still make it to bed before midnight.  But worrying is not thinking.  Worrying is worrying.  I now remember that as a child I was always thinking.  Absorbing the world around me, thinking about how things worked and how they could work differently, as a child I literally learned something new everyday.

To the adult world around me; climb out of the box you have been existing in.  Stop worrying and start thinking.  Think about how things work, why things work and what else it could be used for.  When is the last time you wondered why a spider has eight legs and how a hub cap would make an excellent super hero shield, for me it was yesterday.  So please throw away your boxes or better yet take that box and make something really cool.

Thanks E.B.!

My version of Princess & The Pea

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