The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators has an annual narrative art award for illustrators. This year’s theme was “Silver Livings” from the saying “every cloud has a silver lining”.
I initially had no inspired ideas for the theme until the day before the award submission deadline. A friend, Emily Manning, spoke of working through the challenge of change and finding the silver lining. That gave me my “ah-ha” moment of an idea.
The first panel is about having a regular routine but behind you is a wave of change. One fish sees the wave but it is not enough to stop prevent what comes next. 2020 hindsight – it is better to face the waves so you can anticipate when a big one is about to crash down.
The submission is to consist of three sequential images, without text, and be either color (picture book audience) or black and white (middle-grade audience).
I will post the second panel tomorrow. The art was created from an initial pencil sketch idea and then rendered digitally in color using Photoshop.
Read more about the SCBWI award on their website: https://www.scbwi.org/scbwi-narrative-art-award/
The idea for this art was inspired by the painting “Green Archangel Raphael Surfing Healing Waves“. See more about the surfing life’s changes and finding silver linings on the DonnaBellas Angels blog post about it.
