The first panel showed a wave about to crash with the second panel reflecting the wave’s aftermath when your world gets turned upside down. If you have ever been in big waves, then you will recognize how quickly you can get flipped upside down. When this happens to me, I often have a brief moment of panic when I am lost in the churning water and tumbled by the wave as I am unable to get my “up” orientation to air. The panic happened to me more as a kid while as an adult I have learned to hold my breath and go with the water until the moment passes. Also as an adult, I have gained hindsight and learned better how to judge and watch for the big waves!
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 business coach, 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 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 third 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.
