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. The third panel reveals the triumph of overcoming the obstacle or “silver linings”. You cannot stop the waves of change in your life, but the silver lining is to adapt by surfing these changes. I am calling the series “Surfing Silver Linings”. It can also be viewed as a narrative adaption for the saying of “go with the flow”.
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 friend, Emily Manning (http://www.emilymanning.com/), 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).
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.
