SCBWI project: Princess Cupcake

This weekend I attended  my first SCBWI conference! SCBWI stands for Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. I had the awesome opportunity to participate in a character design workshop with famed Art Director Martha Rago from HarperCollins Publishing!

About a three weeks prior to the conference We, the artists, were emailed a PDF with two possible projects. We were then asked to choose one of them. I chose Princess Cupcake. For this project our job was explore the character and eventually create a book cover. Martha asked us to send her our sketches and a mock-up for the book cover and she would send us feedback on the assignment.

This was a really good exercise and I learned a ton from this. One of the main things that I learn was to not give the story away on the cover. As you can see in the mock-up of the cover I showed the princess already holding a cupcake in her hand. Martha suggested that I show the princess baking or doing something that might hint at the story but not totally give it away.

I redrew the princess baking in the kitchen making a mess. Originally, I had a cat  as her pet but became bored with the character. So I decided to swap out the cat for a pig and BLAMO the painting became ten times more fun!

At the conference, this weekend, we had our final critiques from Martha on the project. I was given some great suggestions and advice on my cover art and will post the update when I complete it. Thanks to Martha and SCBWI for a great conference and workshop!