During November, in our mentorship with Rebecca Guay, we had a special guest present us with an assignment and then critique us during the final November class. Our special guest was Rubin Pfeffer, former SVP of Simon & Schuster Children’s Books, and currently a literary representative for East/West Literary Agency. He gave us a children’s book manuscript from one of the authors he represents, Ann Whitford Paul, and we had to create a dummy and a sample final image for the book. Since this manuscript is still in its early stages and may be published someday, I can’t say more details about it.
First, here are some sample dummy thumbnail images:
The final sample has two stages. The first, with the flamingo in the background, was just too crowded, and the space for text was tiny. So after the critique with Rubin and Rebecca and my classmates I made this second version, where the flamingo is completely removed and we have this nice space for the text. Breathing room. I also cleaned up the bottom left background too. So here are the two versions:
After hearing the feedback from Rebecca and Rubin, this would be the sample I show in my portfolio. If you'd never seen the flamingo, you wouldn't miss it. Unfortunately, now you've seen it! haha
Anyway, I’m having a great time in this class. Rubin was a wonderful guest and had a lot of things to say about all of our work and about the children’s book industry. I’m pleased with the work I’ve been doing, and am definitely making my best portfolio pieces to date. I don’t want it to end!!! During December, we are just working on personal projects since we are meeting less because of the holidays. I’m working on a piece for RWP; we’re doing a group project about vikings! So I’m bringing my work for that into the mentorship to make sure it comes out smashing!!
By the way, the other students in the mentorship are wonderful artists themselves. Here are links to their websites!!!
Mark Williams
Marc Scheff
Kim Kincaid
Annalisa Schaefer
Dylan Sara is another, but he doesn’t yet have a website
The piece is entirely digital… I was intending to paint it, but the digital version was working so well that I just continued working that way. My idea for the text was something like this, with the text wrapping around the circular action, bigger toward the outside, smaller toward the middle: 
