I was so worn out from the local SCBWI conference yesterday that I came home and took a two hour nap. Exhausted, but the good kind. Where you absorb so much and you are crazy excited that your body can’t handle it anymore and gives out.
I don’t know where to begin. So, I have been absent here because I have been working on the Alphabet Book as well as cleaning up my websites. Two of my goals with a deadline of this month were to clean up my blog and to fix my online illustration portfolio. The portfolio just wasn’t working at all for awhile now because the navigation wasn’t the best and it wasn’t compatible with mobile devices that did’t work with flash. Long story short, I now have www.erikabarriga.com that redirects you to www.cargocollective.com/erikabarriga. When I was researching I found Cargo Collective and fell in love. I found out they were invite only, gave it a shot and they gave me an account. I am loving the interface, perfect fit!
So I said all that to say this, I did not want to go to the conference without a working beautifully navigated portfolio site. This past week was spent deep diving in code, magazines, design, etc etc. PLUS there was a part of the conference where you could present your work on a chair. I chose to put some of my illos on foam core and present that way. Since I just finished my website last night, I just finished my board last night as well. Everything has been wild over here, trying to get things done while still being well-rested enough to actually enjoy the conference.
So now to the good stuff, I really enjoyed it. This was my second time attending a SCBWI event, the first one was NY in last year. I found this event to be more intimate all the way around. I think I also made a conscious decision to make more connections and just talk more. Glad I did.
Highlights:
I attended the conference with my friend Christie and her husband Nick – their first conference!
I learned ways to connect myself with my stories from a talk by Caroline Stutson
Met Adam Rex who has a crazy amount of knowledge and talent – loved his keynote speech!
Met Brooke Boynton-Hughes – we follow each other on twitter and now we’ve met in person, so nice!
Entered my much edited down portfolio to the portfolio review and received invaluable feedback
It was great! Now it’s time to focus on more goals, draw some more and possibly write some too.
Nathan Jurevicius is one of the artists that sparked my love for illustrating. His style is insanity at its best. He even has an online game now. His work is just amazing and he’ll always be one of my favorites. Years ago I was reading up on one of my favorite bloggers, Claire Robertson, and she mentioned her friend’s artwork and his interview. I was in immediate awe. I wanted to know how he was producing this work, what program, everything. So I started researching and working with Illustrator. I wish someone had told me in the very beginning that it takes a few programs working together to get the final product. In the late 90s it was much harder to find resources let alone tutorials. Now I can find so many artists through social networking like Facebook and Flickr, digital art magazines and more.
I wrote both Nathan and Claire with questions and they kindly wrote me back. It’s interesting to see how all of our art and interests have changed, a flourishing evolution of change in style and medium. Gives me another swift kick in the behind to get my own work published.
I’ve been absent. What else is new? I only lasted one week with my Happy Bokeh Wednesday photo, lol. Sad, so sad. One thing is brand spanking new for me. I. GOT. THE. IPHONE!!!! And it is the best.
When I got it, it broke after 12 hours. I had a bad sim card and after googling to find other people who ran into this issue, I found many who had the same story I did. I got a new card right after work and it has been blazing fast ever since. I never thought something could change the way I do things as much as things changed when I went from a discman to an iPod. I was so wrong. Shazam is one of my favorite apps because now I can just have it listen to a song anywhere and it will tell me the artist and song. Just that alone had me at hello.
I am a techno geek and proud of it. Here here.
I need to go finish packing for our camping trip this weekend. Yes me. I camp…sometimes. This is only my second time but I am excited. There will probably be hiking, checking out a waterfall, holding and feeding baby alligators, smores and brats. Go go GPS!
I’m not good at navigating. If I haven’t been somewhere in awhile be sure that I will be google-mapping the address and taking the directions, step by step. So I’m pretty sure the best thing the hubs and I have ever bought together was a GPS. I am in love with this thing. ETA of arrival, new faster routes I didn’t even know existed, being able to program the map so every Starbucks and gas station showed up on the screen, etc etc. That one about Starbucks came in especially handy when we were on our road trip to Vancouver from Seattle.
I’m plugging along, organizing files. It’s nice to see some pics from back in the day but it will be even better when I’m finally done already. I took a half day off yesterday and the full day off today. I have my old pc files that needed to be moved over and a million images that need to be backed up onto dvds.
Then the real fun begins and I will never back up years of data at one time again. That is my vow.
Flickr and Facebook keep seducing me. Back to work!
