Hello fellow members of SVS my name is Corlette Douglas , I just want to introduce myself to the form to make connecting a little easier. I'm an FIT alumni student with a 4 year degree in illustration , II also have some knowledge in storyboarding and animation. After leaving college I decided to go into children's books as of now I'm a freelancer looking for clients when I can. ( whether it be through animation or children's books ). In the near future I'm hoping to get an agent if one sees skill in my work , I know we don't necessarily need one but I feel like it does make things a lot better if I had one.

In the meantime I'm trying to build up my confidence and sell my work on etsy and on my website but I have self confidence issues sometimes I feel like my work isn't that interesting to most people so I do have a tendency of putting it off , even mailing out post cards seem to be a little difficult for me.

I'm trying my best to make a business out of my own instead of frequently looking for people to design for , though I do love the feeling of creating work for someone else I do have to say waiting for a payment from clients inst always the best.

Do any of you out the ever get discouraged or down when you don't hear back from clients or publishers , I'm trying to think of ways to raise my confidence.

Oh and if anyone would like to see the kind of work I do here is my website https://corcorart.squarespace.com/

I love creating children with animals mostly bears and a lot of little African American kids cause I feel like we're not represented enough in the book publishing world.

@eriberart ok I'm going to go ahead and break things up I can use a little more spot illustartions on the website to go with my already personal stories. Thank you for the advice

@lmrush Thank you so much I'm hoping to learn a lot from all of you.

I had a quick question on what to do if agents keep saying your work looks great but it's not a right fit for their list or book market. Lately I've had more time to reach out to agents in hopes of finding representation for my art , but I've been finding it a little difficult to find an agent that wants to deal with my style , a lot of them say the work is great but when asking for more out of me they're not sure if they can ask or that my work wouldn't sell well.

So I'm just having conflicting messages , I thought I've learned more than enough and now would be the time to take what I've learned in art and share it but maybe I need to pull back and make things simple to fit in with everyone else.

@CLCanadyArts Thank you the lemons meets Parker was done for my niece when she made a lemonade business I'm actually working on a little book dummy I'm hoping to maybe show it around later. XD

I love the colors you used for the piece , my eyes instantly know where to look. It's adorable

@NessIllustration it's alright I'm learning now so it helps. I think he said that cause he works in tradtional oils and he uses backgrounds to describe hes characters it works for his books so I think he was telling me the same i hopes it would read the same for my layouts. But im not really a background person I mean ill use it but I do get overwhelmed when trying to put it together at times.

But ill will use your advice and hopefully have new pieces for my portfolio soon.

Thanks a ton

@carolinebautista yeah the Clavis Publishing I really wasn't going to enter cause Im really not one for writing but I guess I can if I keep fixing my one story I have and add words to it.

And that would be great but ehh I dont want to be a bother , I've already asked about my work and I'd feel like it's much to ask for text as well.

@eriberart awesome sauce thats great to hear and congrats. If I may ask how long did it take for them to get back to you after you submitted the email ?

Also what does one say when reaching out to an agent die you keep it short and to the point saying you were looking for representation with a few of your samples attached ?

@eriberart and I just added text to two of my personal book illustrations and I feel so weird about it. I know I'm not a writer so seeing what I think the text would /should be is really odd. I know I have to leave it in so agents can see how I work.

@MirkaH Thank you for the feed back I just started taking illustrations out this week , the white boarder thing I'm not sure if I can put that in the gallery layout or if its even enabled but I'm going to make spots and white space in a few of my images to give it a breathable look if that makes sense.

@eriberart ok I'm going to go ahead and break things up I can use a little more spot illustartions on the website to go with my already personal stories. Thank you for the advice

@eriberart I see. The way I was arranging them was which ever piece I made for my story in the order its in is how I would place it. Does that mean that the pieces that are personal stories dont have to got together in the portfolio and I can put single pieces that are stand alone drawing in between?

And I have so many regular drawings too what do you do with your extra illustrations ? Do you archive them for later use ?

And thank you for pointing that out I havent thought about web/portfolio placement since leaving school.

@Nyrryl-Cadiz Oh yes that would be alright with me. I'm going to go back today and redo a lot of the outlining of the parker's lemonade and It would be great to to in my portfolio which ones to keep and get take of.

@NessIllustration oh and one more question when doing books do we ask illustrators put in the text for the author or is that someone elses job to do ? I know we need to know where to put the words in the illustrations but im just wondering.

@NessIllustration it's alright I'm learning now so it helps. I think he said that cause he works in tradtional oils and he uses backgrounds to describe hes characters it works for his books so I think he was telling me the same i hopes it would read the same for my layouts. But im not really a background person I mean ill use it but I do get overwhelmed when trying to put it together at times.

But ill will use your advice and hopefully have new pieces for my portfolio soon.

Thanks a ton

@Corlette-Douglas infact ill see if I can relay these out when I get home today