THE BEAUTY OF TAKING A BREAK

It's a secret that many illustrators and writers know. Finish your project and put it out of sight. When you look at it again, you will see it with fresh eyes. Last week I put away my promotional postcards and began printing up a portfolio to send off for critique.

The printing process isn't always easy, mainly because I have my illustrations in several different forms on my computer. I have versions for 8x10 portfolio, full size for book dummies, cropped for some uses, lo-res for internet, and CMYK for print media. For the most part, they are labeled well, but sometimes it gets confusing and I have to go through a few files and sometimes a different computer to find the right one.

As I was doing this, I came across one of my first designs for my latest batch of postcards. It was clearly the right design for the batch. This happens a lot with my sketches too. In fact, I'm in the process of changing some of my picture book dummy sketches back to earlier versions after several comments from art directors. Ninety-five percent of the time, when I put that first design down on paper, it's good to go. It's when I begin thinking and working it that I complicate things. I can see my thinking process all over the postcards I posted on Monday. Good thing I wasn't having them printed in mass quantities. Another perk to printing at home.

I would love to post images of the new postcards, but blogger is not formatting well this morning. I'd rather not spend the time de-bugging the code to make the images behave. Maybe I'll come back later and try again... UPDATE: Came back and switched my blog to the "Old Editor". I hated to do it, but I don't have the time to waste on images that don't stay put in my posts!