borrow

A happy accident in pencils, cardboard backing 

and color palette experiments

is my latest submission to the May SCBWI Insight's prompt word "borrow."

Don't you love getting to borrow from all the delicious books waiting in the library?

Here's a question for my creative friends -  do you ever work with prompts?

I am stretched when I work on art for Birdy's sight word cards.
I try to think of all the ways a simple word speaks to me,
looking for the story behind it.

Online resources such as SCBWI Insight drawing challenges
or Colour Collective's weekly color prompts are a fantastic springboard
for experimentation. And online challenges are abundant, once one starts looking.
 

  How do you stretch yourself? 

Do you write from prompts?

Do you ever coax words out left-handed, if you're a righty?

Sketch with eyes closed, if you're an artist?

How do you dig deeper for inspiration?

My brother, illustrator Jesse Joshua Watson continually inspires me,
He paints jaw-dropping wonder on reclaimed wood, old surfboards, drums, plywood.

Beauteous.

Some of our borrowed library treasures this week:

The Night Gardener - Terry and Eric Fan
Roar Like a Lion - by Tae-Eun Yoo
A Rock is Lively - Diane Hutts Aston, ill. by Sylvia Long
The Bear and the Piano - by David Lichtenfeld
Pax by Sara Pennypacker, ill. by Jon Klassen
Tiny Creatures : the world of microbes by Nicola Davies, ill. by Emily Sutton 
The Adventurers by Rachel Elliot, ill. by Valeria Docampo

Dream Animals - by Emily Winfield Martin

What does BORROW bring to mind?

Lucky?

 SCBWI's drawing prompt for March is LUCKY.

I got to thinking about luck,

and what it means to me. 

With or without four-leaf clovers, book contracts, 

double-rainbows or pots of gold,

I am wishing-wells full of the best kind of luck.

I have beauty all around me -

in sky and earth, 

in people with all their glorious quirks,

in a roof over my head, clean water,

in laughter and forgiveness.

And I am free - 

free to write, to make art, to learn,
dream, wish, pray,
to hope.

I believe thankfulness and hope can fill the darkest sky with stars.

That's my kind of lucky.

Books:

The Wishing of Biddy Malone by Joy Cowley, illustrated by Christopher Denise

The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies by Heather Forest, illustrated by Susan Gaber

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger