This last month's SCBWI meeting in San Diego was a panel discussion about diversity and inclusion. They provided some interesting stats (see images here) and a wonderful video found here. The panel was primarily about writing children's books, not illustrating them.

The biggest take-away that I got from it was the concept of "windows" and "mirrors". That as much as young people want to read about people like themselves, they also want to read about people who are different. Creating diverse books is sometimes about providing windows for children to look through at others who aren't like them, and sometimes about providing mirrors in which they can see themselves reflected back.

Regardless of whether it's a window or a mirror, we have to have a basis of knowledge and research (some might say experience is stronger) from which to draw upon so we are actually being authentic and true in our stories.

One of the panelists, René Colato Laínez, said something very interesting. He said he was given advice from an editor that he never forgot. She had told him that when writing stories about a specific culture or minority: if you can take the names of the characters and change them to a different culture (like making all the characters French instead of Latino) and your story isn't impacted or altered, you're not actually writing a story that speaks to the experience of that culture or minority.

In my head, that meant: If you're writing a fairy tale that takes place in Russia, make sure you're using Russia on purpose and not just as decoration. I suppose the same thing can be said about illustrating: don't do something purposefully in, say, a Japanese style, for example, without knowing the why's and how's of the authentic style you're drawing upon. Otherwise you might be communicating information and mistakes you don't realize you're making... (I think that's the definition of cultural appropriation--using pieces of a cultural expression for your own derivative purposes without respecting or caring where it came from or what it might mean or what you might inadvertently communicate...)

Not all stories fit that paradigm. But make sure your choice to include characters of varying ethnicities or cultures or whatever doesn't contradict itself. Do your research. Hire a Sensitivity Reader like you would an Editor for your work. Ask friends from those communities if your work rings true and is non-offensive. 'What we don't know' can inadvertently be a big deal.

One other thing they did mention was the #OwnVoices movement and the inverted version of it that some seem to use against it: the idea that people of a specific minority are the only ones capable of writing stories or illustrating authentic characters from those minorities, and that given the interest in writing that embraces diversity (in 2015 fifteen publishing houses announced new imprints specifically for diversity titles), there is no place for white writers. That is simply not true. But if your goal as a white, 55-year-old male is to create a story about the experience of being a black woman, don't be naive and think your sympathy equates empathy. Respect your subject enough to strive to tell the best story in the most authentic way you can, and that means making an effort at hearing (and actively listening) to their voices and seeking out their expertise, perspectives, and impressions of your work.

I am in the thick of costuming Next to Normal, our second undergrad show of the semester at USD, and simultaneously developing the design of the MFA program show The Visit by Durrenmatt, which will go up in March of 2020. We're making it contemporary instead of mid-1950s when it was originally written.

I am trying to get all my renderings done by Thanksgiving, and it's slow goin'... I've broken down and used a croquis to save time (one I found long ago on DeviantArt--thank-you OdduckOasis--and use it with my costume design students), and I have 78 costume changes to work through...

It's a cast of 14 portraying 37 named characters and additional "townspeople", most of which go through some form of costume shift as the play progresses... It's the definition of a "crap tonne" of work, and this is just the rudimentary discussion phase--there are potentially many adjustements to come as the director responds, and in the end I actually have to realize and mount it... So there will be weeks of pulling from costume stock, purchasing, fitting, returns, and alterations to complete. And of course a sea of quick rigging and costume changes to coordinate with student dressers... My budget is $1500, to include dry cleaning... Hehe...

I'm just trying to get the renderings done right now. One. Step. At. A. Time. I have 4 actors sorta "done". 10 more to go...

@Lee-White Is there a possibility of having a guest speaker, maybe? Someone who has expertise in diversity in illustration? I know this is a hot topic with a number of SCBWI chapters lately... Is there a possibility of finding an Art Director who might be okay guesting on the subject? As much as I value the opinions and perspectives of you three, maybe there is someone whom you can invite tho share their experiences?

I wonder if writers and illustrators might have different kinds of challenges that might help narrow the approach to the episode(s)?

It is indeed a loaded subject, you're right--and parsing it all out in a single episode could be really challenging. But kudos to you for wanting to consider ways to engage with it at all. The issue is a real thing that illustrators need to be aware of, and an episode like that could really benefit developing (and working) practitioners.

I'll add my 2¢ to the chorus: Procreate all the way.

I tried Adobe Fresco as part of my CC subscription. It does a few things very beautifully--watercolor and oils, specifically. The larger brushes seem to have a lot of lag, of course, so it's not a perfectly fluid experience. But it's hard to argue with the results.

That being said, Procreate has ways of rendering specific aspects of those mediums just as nicely if you know how to do it. What you lose in depth you gain in versatility and breadth of capacity. There is not another app out there that can do as much as Procreate in the way it does it for the amount of money it costs (Affinity Designer & Photo do more but they are more expensive and have a less robust brush engine). Hands down, Procreate is clearly the industry standard for art on the iPad, as much as other apps might have a huge following.

And it is soon going to be capable of doing even more than it can already. Updates are free. $10 forever. Adobe Fresco cannot make that claim. It appears Adobe will require an overpriced subscription fee to use it after 6 months, and it's necessary to download and switch between their multiple apps to do most of what Procreate can do all by itself. Plus, the promised "Photoshop for iPad" to be released this year seems to be woefully incomplete (many are speculating Apple pushed Adobe to make the announcement to increase sales for their new iPads). In short, I don't have faith that Adobe will develop Fresco further than its current state.

Give Procreate a shot. It's as expensive as a fast food meal. And it won't increase your cholesterol.

I've been very absent from the forums lately. I've been in the thick of costume designing three shows at the same time where I work, and the one I am the most proud of just closed last weekend. The second one opened last night, and the third is in a couple weeks.

I thought I'd share the costume renderings I did for the first project--they were for a show called How High the Moon, which was a semi-autobiographical folktale written by one of the actors and directed by his wife about their attempts to have a child. They abstracted their story and the child became a moon, the fertility clinic was run by a bear, the adoption agency by a raccoon... It was a quite lovely, intimate, and ultimately heartbreaking and uplifting story about striving for a dream that doesn't come true, and living with that loss. It was quite a special experience for everyone involved. There were projections and animation, puppets, and a live 3-piece band that played blues and bluegrass.

I had done "speculative renderings" for a proposed production of it a year ago (shown below) for some different actors. But this year we got to mount it as part of La Jolla Playhouse's "WOW (With Out Walls) Festival". Of course, changes were made (I'd originally conceptualized the animal costumes made out of newsprint and kraft paper to match the cardboard puppets, but they wouldn't have survived so we had to do something else).

It was done outdoors for an audience of 60-80 each night, under the stars, complete with the dripping wet condensation that comes with doing a show near the waterfront as the sun sets (oy). I built all the costumes, latch-hooking the bear's "fur" from the cast's donated t-shirts and the raccoon's "fur" from other non-knit pieces. I accidentally cut a hole in a dress I made which required me to "fix it" with ribbon embroidery flowers to cover it up (which meant, of course, that I had to embroider others all around the hem... Nightmare. Just a nightmare. I'd never done ribbon embroidery before. AAAAAAH! What one does for the love of a project, ya know?) I also built a 1950's "fish cape" with layers and layers of fish scales, a duck tail, and a sad little patchwork set of bunny ears.

I knew because of the confluence of these shows that I wouldn't be able to do much drawing in October (Inktober would be a bust for me), but I did manage to go to my first SCBWI meetings, where I was lit on fire with hope and inspiration and confidence-inspiring advice. I've already met some awesome fellow illustrators there, and we've had a couple "schmoozes" where we play games and do life drawing with a model.

It has been a full month! I only have one more show to mount, then I can concentrate on putting some drawing back in my life!! Woot!!

I tried inking digitally for the first time last year, and got through about 12 days of Inktober before I stopped. I simply had to let it go--my day job demanded more time in October than I could allocate to participating.

It took a long time for me to come to the conclusion that stopping was okay, because I really felt I'd crashed and burned and failed. I felt like, if I couldn't even do Inktober how could I possibly be able to handle being a professional? And since everyone else seems to be doing it around their professional responsibilities, what does that say about me?

It has taken me a year to come to the understanding that Inktober is what you want it to be. Seeing Jake's personable nature in the SVSLearn videos has (somehow, for whatever reason) given me "permission" to realize that he's simply wanting people to play and explore and maybe discover something new. That's all. And if you want to turn it into a "thing" (however you want to use it), hey--he's down with whatever. It's not like this thing is like playing with fire. Some people use it to deep dive into practicing their skills, some use it to promote themselves, some use it to try something new, some for... well, whatever. It's all good.

And it's all up to you. I wonder if the "pressure" one might feel to participate isn't necessarily strictly about Inktober as much as it's about seeing a whole bunch of artists pile on to something and feeling pressured to participate or be left out. Sorta like <big booming voice> "POST ON INSTAGRAM CONSTANTLY" is a thing for artists...

I'm gonna do maybe one a week, I dunno. If one of the prompts tickles my fancy I may play. But that's it. I have a very busy schedule and there ain't no time for guilt. I think we can all agree Jake would be the FIRST one to urge you to not let it turn into that. It's awesome that so many have the opportunity to do it, and wonderful they choose to invest so much into it. Kudos to them. I, personally, just can't be one of those folks. And I, for one, am really REALLY gonna enjoy being stimulated by all the incredible creativity being spawned. It's gonna be fun to sit back and watch the feed, ya know? I mean, who else can appreciate the artistry like we fellow artists, right? That's my hope this year: to be a phenomenal cheerleader. I'm looking forward to that.

This article goes through a bit more depth about the changes coming.

https://bardotbrush.com/procreate-5-preview/

I love your "freelance by force" phrase. The universe is pushing you to higher and better things. Look at this as an opportunity, and go forward with gusto!!

As others have alluded to above, a Master's Study can mean a lot of different things depending on what you want to get out of it. My own personal Master Studies are about trying to copy as closely as possible, and learning what I can through that process. But as @TessaW said above, exact replication can sometimes lull a person into not thinking about what they're doing, so try to make the experience an "active learning" endeavor instead of passive--sometimes that means looking for specific things which can help make the process of creating the study be less overwhelming.

I suggest you frame your approach to Master Studies by narrowing the purpose for which your studying it: Direct copy? Values? Technique? Textures? Colors? Composition? Line weight? Edges? Etc.

Conversely, it can be daunting to dive in head first and try to replicate everything all at once but sometimes that a good learning experience as well.

For my own digital copies, I learned not so much how the illustrator did their work but how to use the tools at my disposal to replicate their pieces. That helped me learn more about what my tools could and couldn't do, and where my own skills were in relation to what they did. It enabled me to see how I could use my digital tools in a way I hadn't thought about before, as well as think about how the illustrators used the various elements of design (line, color, texture, shape/form, etc) to achieve what they got.

It was a useful process for me, personally. But I also think that I will approach Master studies/copies in the future with a bit more internal focus.

Stating exactly what it is that you are looking for and then being able to articulate exactly what you are discovering as you go along could be a good way of making the experience work for you over and above just a simply copying.

I'm not sure there are any Apps that are specifically for the Arts community, but I can say that ArtStation as a hub is growing in popularity. The challenge with it is that it's mostly other artists. It's a bit like Behance without being so overwhelmingly Adobe brand-centered.

Instagram and Facebook were good because they could reach outside that artist circle to buyers who aren't artists.

I've personally contemplated this a lot. I had some hiccups with Instagram but things seem to be back on track. I use it not to reach anyone interested in my work but to simply share and put things out there in a stream that doesn't require people to come to my website. 99% of my followers are fellow artists. And that's good in the sense that I want to see and support their efforts. But not necessarily in a "I want to purchase a print" kind of way. I don't think Instagram is as useful for leveraging sales as it used to be.

Facebook is experiencing an entropic decline for numerous reasons. And Tumblr pretty much imploded. Snapchat seems very juvenile in a lot of ways... And Twitter can be a morass of noise and nonsense impossible to rise above or even mitigate at all nowadays.

The vast sea of social media options seems to finally be reducing down and the new platforms are becoming more and more specific. I don't think it's possible to think of Social Media the way we thought of it 10- or even 5- years ago. It's not the same path to "connection" or "finding one's audience" that it used to be.