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Showing posts with label Paul Morton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Morton. Show all posts
Sunday, 14 December 2014
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
December 11th - Paul Morton
Do you have a Tweetable micro story for
Paul's illustration?
Post it in the comments and we'll tweet it with #W8PAdvent and your Twitter handle
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Thursday, 19 June 2014
Featured Illustrator: Paul Morton
Frogs, frogs, frogs, frogs, frogs.
Where did it all start? Well, in the 1960's there was a kid’s comic called Jack and Jill, and every so often there would be a feature about FrogMorton of Morton Hall, so since the age of about eight my nickname was of course, FROG.
When I started my art studio on leaving college (Liverpool Poly, studying illustration) I thought of Hot Frog Graphics as a memorable and fiesty kinda name. It stuck, it worked, and 30 years on is still going strong.
I've worked for many national and international clients and have had my artwork featured in magazines, Athena posters, greetings cards, children's games, some very famous chocolate bars, high street banks, CD covers, supermarket cereals, soft drinks, medicines, even more chocolate and yes, I get loads of yummy samples!!
Work for Children
But my abiding and burning passion is for children's picture books. I've reviewed them for local newspapers, illustrated educational and novelty books and magazines, and every so often over the years, have focused my energies into producing my own picture book ideas.It's only been with the catalyst of SCBWI membership, over the last five to six years, that I've realised how to better harness the many skills needed to bring a successful picture book idea to realisation along with enough savvy craft to declare it presentable for submitting to publishers.
My love of children's books started, not in childhood, but in our local children's library when I was 18 years old. We were taken there from art school and encouraged to get down and in amongst these little treasures and absorb their many wonders. To this day I can still reach out and recall that special bewitching magic that crackles in the air at Christmas time. For me, it's this kind of perfect expectant excitement that I want to invest into my stories and pictures.
I've just finished illustrating two fun picture books for Cheeky Monkey Publishers in the UK, and have my own illustrated story out with three publishers at the moment.
Studio Set-up
I work from home in one double bedroom studio with Apple Macs along one wall, and behind me drawing tables with lightbox and a few thousand colour pencils. My favourites are Karismacolor pencils, sadly no longer made, but there are others that come close to their waxy rich pigments - including Spectracolor, Prismacolour and Polycolor. I’ve also constructed a summer house at the end of the garden in an attempt to emulate Roald Dahl’s famous writing sanctuary muse. It seems to be working, as now just the smell of it’s wooden timberwork evokes cosy feelings of potential stories.
I like to sketch and doodle my ideas into my look-a-like Moleskin notebooks using a soft black Polychromos pencil. Once these drawings are scanned into the Mac I have a vast and comprehensive toolbox at my fingertips in the shape of Photoshop. I discovered this wonderful programme at it’s inception and it has been invaluable and at the core of my creative work ever since.
I like to have two or three picture book ideas simmering at the same time, as this seems to bring some objectivity to my approach on each one. Currently there are stories for Wiz-bod robots, piglets and two small children and monsters, all bubbling away merrily.
I don't have an agent, but it's something I’ve been giving serious thought to regarding representation for my picture book work. If any art agents are interested in having a chat about this, please get in touch.
My general illustration work can be seen on my Hot Frog website (you’ll be able to spot those very famous chocolates!) And I have just updated my dedicated online publishing portfolio.
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See more of Paul's work in our Featured Illustrator Gallery
Contact Paul by email here
Hotfrog Graphics is to be found here.
Paul's publishing portfolio is on Issu.
Monday, 19 May 2014
Ten-Minute Blog Break - 20th May
They all make an appearance on the Blog Break this week!
My prediction that the Writing Process Blog Tour would die off when it ran out of writers to consume has been proved wrong. Like a fiendishly clever virus, it has mutated and this week's victims are all writer/illustrators. Katherine Lynas talks about her work with the funeverse, before handing over to Sam Zuppardi, who has some interesting advice on how to manage and grow ideas. Paul Morton then picks up the baton - giving us a sneak peek at couple of picture books he's working on - and hands it on to current Words & Pictures featured artist Jamie Stevenson. Anyone who is only an illustrator is advised to turn off their internet connection right now, before the blog tour can mutate further. You have been warned!
I really liked the discussion guide that Candy Gourlay has built for readers of Shine. I found her questions on the book thought-provoking, and tried not to be too annoyed that her novel seemed so thematically complex and cleverly constructed. I'm thinking of starting a petition requesting that Candy gives us other children's writers a chance, by making her next book very generic and full of dumb action scenes *
This week, we find out why Lorraine Gregory hasn't blogged for ages - she's been playing too many video games. Oh wait, that's not the reason - it's because her "brain has been exploding" from all the intensive help she's been getting on her manuscript from those nice people at the Golden Egg Academy. Find out from Lorraine why getting better as a writer is a lot like leveling up in a video game.
Thirty years ago, I was still drawing misshapen pictures of Dennis the Menace. John Shelley, on the other hand, was creating beautiful pen and ink illustrations for the novel A Canoe in the Mist by Elsie Locke. His blog post all about the book is like opening a treasure trove and I was entranced by John's drawings and the story behind their creation.
Nick.
* Not really. Well, unless she really wants to. Mind you, that version of Shine with the vampires did sound pretty cool...
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Photoshop Brushes Part two - Let’s make our own.
The first point to remember is that any mark made on the screen can be turned into a Photoshop brush. Even a photograph can be captured and ‘stamped’ into your artwork. You can type text, convert it to paths and then use that text image as a brush.
TIP - This can be handy when used to ‘stamp’ your copyright details, contact details etc onto an image to save time actually typing out the words.
So, to save a mark as a new brush shape always follow these steps.
Picture 1 - Rather than draw my new shape, I’ve used the path tool to create a shape called ‘single hair’. Once it’s made active and filled with black you can then save as a brush... (pic 2)
Menu / Edit / Define Brush preset ...
Name your brush, I’ve called mine ‘fuzzy’ (pic 3)
You’ll now see ‘fuzzy’ listed as the final brush preset in the drop down list, (pic 4) and like we learnt in part 1, it isn’t of much use until you start tweaking the settings. First of all open up the spacing (pic 5) so that when you ‘paint’ the single hair shapes are nicely spaced (pic 6).
Then using these settings to multiply the single hair shape (pic 7) you will begin to see just how versatile your brush is becoming. With a rusty red foreground colour and brighter orange as the background colour, we start to get some interesting marks.
We can further exploit the settings by usefully controlling the direction of the fur strokes, (pic 8) and thus, we can paint a pom-pom shape.
Mixing colours and controlling flow and opacity, plus switching to a black background, gives us this. (pic 9)
TIP - Another amazingly useful function I’ve not yet mentioned, is that any brush can be used to stroke along a path. So if you need a particular shape, but don’t feel confident drawing freehand, create a path, and then ask PS to stroke it with your new brush. It could be a single line (pic 10) or an elegant shape that would be impossible to control by hand (pic 11).
But of course you don’t need to restrict yourself to the initial single hair, especially if you’re after realistic fur. Pic 12 shows a brush created from a collection of random shapes and the resulting effects achieved.
Your brush shapes can be saved, exported, emailed to a friend etc.
TIP - There are thousands of useful free brushes online, made available by the community of generous PS users.
I’ll briefly show you one final “Hair and Fur” brush. I downloaded this and tweaked it, and you should still be able to find it online. Although you’d never guess from its peculiar single-dab brush shape (it’s that white squiggle on the blue square) this is one of the most realistic brushes around for painting hair, and many artists have used it to great effect. Take a look at my settings (pic 13) and then how I gave myself a quick 10 minute hairy makeover in pic 14.
TIP - Rather than resort to expensive and difficult to master 3D programmes, I’ve instead been using various hair and fur brushes for a number of years now.
Fellow SCBWI illustrator Mike Brownlow includes various PS brushes amongst his array of illustration tools and techniques. He says, “Brushes can be great when used judiciously, and are really useful. I just wish I could work out a better way of organising them.” Here’s how Mike employs his subtle craft, carefully using fur brushes, and others, in his successful Boris the Troll books.
Obviously all the considerations and the settings that I’ve mentioned so far in connection with fur and hair, can equally be applied to any other texture or effect that you’re after. Without going into details here’s a collection of my own foliage brushes, (pic 17) the actual brush shapes are shown at the top along with the resulting effects.
And in this jungly/forest book illustration, you’ll see how I’ve made good use of a few of them.
Finally, let me show you how to create a textured pastel/chalk brush. (pic 20) In the vignetted oval we can see the actual brush shape, and below, the settings used to achieve these soft pastel-like marks.
TIP - The background is a scan of pencil on cartridge and the texture used in the brush settings aims to emulate this so that the colour sits on top of the cartridge, unless more pressure is used, and then the colour sinks into the texture.
And below, these soft, watercolour-like marks in pic 21 were made with the 3 brush tip shapes at the top.
TIP - Your original brush shape needn’t be filled with 100% black. Remarkable effects can result from faded softer brush shapes.
One final thought, having created a favourite brush, don’t limit yourself to ‘painting and drawing’ with it. You can deploy your brand new brush as an eraser or as the smudge tool for some further exciting effects.
I’ll leave you with another image from Mike which cleverly demonstrates his adept use of textural brushes to great effect.
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Paul Morton lives in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, from where he runs Hot Frog Graphics illustration and design studio.
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Photoshop Brushes Part 1
Anyone who has used Photoshop will know that it boasts some great illustration tools. Its basic set of brush tools allows you to airbrush very convincingly and if you care to dig a little deeper, you'll find the natural (and unnatural) media brushes that are provided in the package. With perseverance you can learn how to customise these tools and create your very own, resulting in virtually unlimited possibilities - such as the ability to paint with grass, cloak a creature in fur, paint foliage on a tree, airbrush wisps of smoke, snakeskin, glitter, barbed wire, etc etc.
Take a look at the illustration that heads this article. Click to enlarge. Every mark you see on there has been created using a customised brush. I'm going to show you how to achieve this and I'll also give you the settings for some of those brushes, so that you can try them for yourselves.
First let's check out the most basic of brushes and get a grasp of their functionality. There are hard edged and soft edged brushes, and a variety in between. Typically, pencils are hard edged with no anti aliasing (ie. no soft edges)
(I find it useful to view my onscreen brush tip as 'normal size' or 'full size'. Then, as you're working, you see a ring indicating roughly the size of the tip you're dealing with. Much clearer than the standard cross-hair cursor. To do this, go to Photoshop preferences and choose 'Display and Cursors').
It's also useful at this stage to appreciate how important it is to use a graphics tablet and stylus such as Wacom, in order to master the natural look of each brushstroke. It's understandable for newcomers to be a little cautious at first, but try signing your signature on screen using a mouse. Then with a stylus. There's no contest.
With the brush tool selected, go to Window/brushes (or F5) which opens the 'Brush Palette'. Let's choose, for example, a fairly large, hard edged brush.
Picture 1 - shows our Hard Edged Brush stroked firstly with a mouse then with the tapered elegance created by using a stylus.
With the Brush Palette open it's here's where you can choose the size and style of brush from the drop down list. Make sure you take note of the mini palette called 'Brush Presets' as this is where all the brush alchemy takes place.
With 'Brush Tip Shape' selected, look at the bottom of the long palette and you'll see controls for brush spacing, brush size, softness and brush angle controls. To squidge the shape and angle of the brush (not terribly useful but you may as well know how) use the cross hair control.
All the changes you make get a mini dynamically updated window at the base displaying your current brush stroke.
Picture 2 - shows how the round brush has been squidged, more obviously apparent when painting in various directions.
As you paint with any brush, Photoshop spits out a series of dots of 'paint' at regular intervals. Lots of frequently emitted dots equals a solid line of paint. But if you slow down and control the frequency of the dots you'll get...a dotted line.
See Picture 3 Painting with regular dots at regular intervals is OK for regular graphic and decorative work, but if we're striving to get 'natural,' then we need to mix it up with a few random factors. Let's make our rows of squashed dots become random sizes.
Picture 4 - shows how 'Shape Dynamics' gives precise control over the min and max size limits of our dots, with 'Size Jitter' mixing them around between.
And rather than keep these random dots flowing in one continuous line lets disturb their flow.
Picture 5 -shows how 'Scattering' allows the dots to fall either side of our continuous line and using blue and green as foreground and background colours, we can also randomise the colour of our dots by using 'Colour Dynamics'.
All we've done here is ask for blue and green to alternate as each dot is painted (jitter at 100%) But if the jitter was set at 30% for example, we'd get various tones of blue through green as we 'sprayed' with colour. Additionally if we turned on 'Hue Jitter', we'd get complementary colours thrown into the mix. At its most extreme, we could paint with rainbow coloured dots.
The total control over this randomness, which affects the scattering, the intensity, the direction, the opacity, the purity of colours and more, can all be further influenced by the pressure sensitivity of our stylus. As you draw on the tablet, a change of pressure can alter most of these effects, as can the initial direction that you begin to paint in. It's bewildering, but now that you've got so far you ought to have a grasp of the fundamentals.
But who wants to paint with dots all the time? (latter day digital pointillists maybe) Because no matter how much we mix up these variations, our dots are still dots. But if we pick one of PS media brushes such as chalk, pastel, crayon, etc then it starts to look a whole lot more natural and very practical for 'real' illustration work.
Let's choose one of the chalk and pastel brushes. At the bottom of my list of brushes I've adapted and customised one of PS pastel brushes and re-named it 'best new pastel'. Picture 6 - If we zoom in and inspect a single brush 'dab' (created with a single click of the mouse) instead of a dot, it looks like this…
In the next article I'll show you how to create such a brush from scratch, but for now we'll experiment with my 'best new pastel'. As you can see in the brushstroke window, it's pretty useless until we start refining the control settings.
Picture 7 - after a few minutes experimenting, that very same brush now looks fairly convincing as a soft chalky pastel and uses colours that interact with each other.
Picture 8 - shows the settings I used to replicate the pastel effect of Picture 7
You'll notice that the control for 'Texture' is now also active. Via that Preset, there are 100s of possible textures to try out. The size of the texture along with its depth, plus subsequent pen pressure, can determine if the colours 'bleed' into the texture, sit on top of it or completely obliterate it.
Picture 9 - the final picture in part one of this feature shows our pastel brush laid over a few different textures of various sizes. The 'mesh-like' strokes top left are achieved by using 'Dual brush' controls which I'm not going to explain in this beginner article, but basically, it allows 2 brushes to mix and interact with each other.
You should now be able to explore any brush and make some reasonably useful marks with them. Once you have experimented and found your perfect pastel, or emulated your favourite Karismacolour pencil, charcoal, ball-point pen, etc etc, don't be surprised that it's not in your brush palette next time you open up PS. If you don't SAVE your new brush, I'm afraid all the experimenting and refining has been for nothing. So it's crucial to regularly go to Brushes then, using the tiny right-facing arrow top right of the palette, you'll see a drop down list. From that list choose 'New brush preset' and name and save your new creation.
Next time we'll create our own unique brushes and see how they can be, and have been, used in children's book illustration.
Sunday, 9 March 2014
Two More Birthday Top Picks!
Did everyone have a fabulous World Book Day? Or week even? I'm into children's classics at the moment. On #WBD I finished Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time - a psychadelic adventure in time and space to search for a missing father and started E. Nesbit's, The Enchanted Castle, where a group of children find a mischievous girl who accidentally turns herself invisible with a magic ring - sound familiar?
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| Stig, Paul's tribute illustration |
1st June 2013 was the 50th anniversary of the publication of Stig of the Dump and on the day, in spite of a cyber attack on server in Sarajevo which brought W&P down for a lot of that Saturday, we posted Paul Morton's beautiful retrospective on Stig, his author Clive King and illustrator Edward Ardizzone.
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| Anna Violet's illustration for 19th Dec. |
Last week Nick and Katrina reported on the event of the year - The Undiscovered Voices Launch Party which was closely followed by Katrina's announcement that she's signed with Agent Gemma Cooper! Brilliant news for which we'll be hanging out the flags very soon here on W&P!
Nick struggled with what to have for lunch while, yet again, picking a marvellous blog selection, news was from Southampton (yay) and we celebrated Sandra Greave's fantastic shortlisting for The Waterstone's Children's Book Prize. We welcomed new illustration features writer Margaret Sturton with a great report on her experience at Cambridge School of Art's Summer School last year. She has some very useful tips for anyone thinking about booking this year. And we also had a wonderful introduction to our new column Ask a Picture Book Editor with our very own RA Natascha Biebow and Little Tiger Press' Ellie Farmer. This is going to be great - questions for them to get their teeth into - a splendid image - to writers@britishscbwi.org please, or leave a comment on the post.
Next week we have birthday inspiration from Philippa, another in the Proofreading Tips series from Catriona and Paul is back with some Photoshop tips for illustrators.
Having sent the UV winners on their way hopefully to agent signings and book deals we'd like to spotlight the oh so nearly there honorary mentions next Saturday. If' you're a UV honorary mention send me editor@britishscbwi.org a link to your UV excerpt and I'll post that with a roll of honour and your book title.
Hope UK SCBWIs are enjoying the sunshine!
Jan Carr
Thursday, 16 January 2014
Keeping Those Promo Plates Spinning
"I still marvel at how new clients, in say Australia, can be in contact about a new job and within seconds they're checking out my latest work and downloading samples"
We artists and illustrators are not particularly famous for being vociferous self promoters. But the shortest of freelance experience soon makes it glaringly obvious that if we don't shout out about how brilliant we are for ourselves, we are very soon going to starve in our cliched garrets. Yes, there are agents who can amplify our greatness, and many artists swear by them. Some at them! It used to be a matter of assembling a fantastic portfolio, getting cards printed, seeking out the most relevant and up-to-date list of commissioning editors and then getting out there and doing some real 'Face Time'. These days of course there is absolutely no excuse for failing to have at least one sparkling, professional online shop window.
In this article I'm going to take a quick look at the options out there for illustrators wanting to present to the world.
Disclaimer - The following views and opinions expressed are those of the author, and should not be construed as recommendations or endorsements by SCBWI
It shows my age when I still marvel at how new clients, in say Australia, can be in contact about a new job and within seconds they're checking out my latest work and downloading samples. At the very same time an editor in perhaps Calgary, is flipping through my online Picture Book dummy and following the hot links to my apps. Amazing and wonderful - but the choice of online options is overwhelming, and can quite easily demand a full time job just to manage and upkeep efficiently! Remember those plate spinning cabaret acts? Well running a number of websites and social networking sites is pretty much like that. There are a few broken plates on MY floor but hopefully I manage to always keep a handful spinning.
In fact at the time of writing this I have around 20 online presences where my work is legitimately displayed. I guess the various sites fall loosely into categories such as websites/homepage, social networking sites, online portfolios/galleries, shop fronts, workplace/job swapping discussion sites, scrapbook / pinboard sites, however they do fluidly overlap and share space.
The 7 most cost effective and paid-for sites that work for me
The most useful and most visited online space is my home web site. Although there are lots of excellent, and free, self-creation web services, I opted to pay to have mine developed. It's currently built in Wordpress. After Contact, (see below), my website is my 2nd most important source of new work.
If you don't yet have your own website then a blog or simply a Facebook page is an absolute must these days. Wordpress and Blogger are two of the most popular sites for creating web pages and blogs. They give ease of access, 100s of useful templates and are backed by lots of professional and powerful features. My second busiest and most upkept site is my Hot Frog Blog, created in Blogger (owned by Google).
And it's worth remembering that all the images that are posted to your Google blog will automatically be collected into one vast Picasaweb chronological image album, and available to view/share. I'm not sure if my blog does actually bring in much new work but it seems an obligation as well as a very useful and practical way to keep a record of all my most recent work. I know SCBWI writers treat their blog almost as a longer term, ongoing WIP and find them invaluable.
www.contact-creative.com
This is my number one source of new illustration work and directly due to the fact that this is a tied in deal with the printed illustration directory 'Contact' book. At around £1200 for a double page spread it's not cheap but I've found it cost effective. In the package you also get the online gallery portfolio plus another tied in deal (20 free gallery images) with the American Serbin Directory of Illustration (see further below).
www.childrensillustrators.com
$465 per year for a portfolio of 24 images. Your portfolio can be edited at any time, with a searchable tag engine. It's user friendly, inexpensive and a very effective at procuring new work. Make sure you keep your work up to date, and your search tags apt and lively.
$650 per year for a gallery of 24 images (plus one time set up fee of $100).
The ispot describes itself as a portfolio and rights managed site, has lots of extras that you can upgrade to. I tried the stock image section for a while but had no sales probably due to the wrong choice of images.
www.directoryofillustration.com
Free via Contact, you get 20 images on their portfolio site. Serbin also produce specific themed portfolio sites for the games industry, children's books and medical illustration etc.
www.playillustration.com
This is one such themed site, and a reduced rate of $25 per month via the Contact deal gets me 20 images on their games and children's books gallery.
Canadian based, after 2 years its usefulness is still pending. Prices from $250 per annum.
One popular site that I've not yet subscribed to is www.hireanillustrator.com, a UK based site with 400+ illustrators, and recommended by some SCBWI members. Having investigated the details for this article I am about to try it myself as it does sound convincing. From £4 per week you get an unlimited number of images in your gallery, but uniquely they mail out promo packs to clients so effectively you're getting work in front of up-to-date contacts.
Although I have described some of these previous sites as 'portfolio sites' they are really only gallery sites. To preserve that experience of flicking through a 'real' portfolio I now come to my favourite of the moment...
www.issuu.com
I first discovered ISSUU a couple of years ago and have come to love its simplicity, effectiveness and professional slickness. ISSUU hosts 14 million publications online, presented in a print-like interface that gives the reader the experience of flicking through page by page. You'll find up to date children's publisher catalogues, 500+ page Photoshop "how to" books - yes, in their entirety! As well as previous month's magazines on fashion, 3D graphics, painting etc etc. Titles that are still on the book shelves are archived there - for free!
But the reason I've come to rave about it and wanted other SCBWI members to know about it is that with a bit of ingenuity you can use it for excellent self promotion. Firstly, it's easy to create and upload a specifically tailored and dedicated page flipping portfolio. It's also a great place to host your working PB dummy. Now any art editor, anywhere in the world, at any time, can be sent a link, can take a look through your latest PB project - and reject it within minutes!
To create my Publishing Portfolio, I first designed each portfolio page layout in Photoshop, saved each as a jpg, then assembled all the sequential jpg pages into a PDF presentation (still within Photoshop) before uploading the presentation to ISSUU. Once on ISSUU you can embed hot links to other work, websites, email etc.
You're allowed 3 private publications, such as PB dummies that you wouldn't want everyone to see, all other works must be public. With so many publications on ISSUU there are bound to be some copyright issues so it might be prudent to check that someone else has not already added some of your books illegally! It has been known.
To finish with, in no particular order, here's a list of other sites well worth checking out.
For other blog / web creation sites try:
http://www.weebly.com
Free web creation with e-commerce options, upgrade and pay for more features.
www.wix.com
"Create a Free Online Portfolio. Choose a design. Customize it with ease. Publish online instantly". The SCBWI Illustration Showcase is a Wix site, and so obviously Wix is also good for creating an online portfolio/gallery too.
www.moonfruit.com
Build a free website or a shop.
Other sites similar to ISSUU include:
www.yumpu.com/en/I've tried this, good but not as slick and smooth to run as ISSUU.
www.yudu.com
Multi platform publishing.
http://en.calameo.com/books
Like ISSUU but I've not really tried it out.
Online gallery sites
http://thecreativefinder.com
Free portfolio/gallery hosting, job marketplace.
Where 'finders' meet creatives for networking, collaboration and inspiration.
www.flickr.com
The place to go for photography hosting. One free terabyte of space, perfect for an online gallery. Ladybird Books don't take submissions but do ask you to upload illustration samples to their Flickr account from which they might pick future artists.
www.linkedin.com
A more business orientated FaceBook.
Meet art directors and commissioning editors online.
www.youtube.com
Well known of course, and can be excellent for showing promo animations/videos for your books, how-to demonstrations etc.
www.behance.com
Free platform to showcase and discover photography, graphic design, illustration, and fashion. Owned by Adobe.
www.slideshare.net
A free slide presentation hosting service.
Often called "YouTube for slideshows". 16 million registered users.
www.squarespace.com
$8 per month. Website and online gallery creation.
www.viewbook.com
Create websites, mobile portfolios for iPad, From $19 month.
www.bigblackbag.com
$9 per month online portfolio/gallery.
JacketFlap is a comprehensive resource for information on the children's book industry. Thousands of published authors, illustrators, librarians, agents, editors, publicists, and publishers visit JacketFlap every day. JacketFlap also has the world's largest database of information on children's book publishers.
www.adbase.com in conjunction with www.foundfolios.com
A marketing and recruitment site for artists and photographers. Free to upload a portfolio. Lots of upgrade options to pay for. A marketing database.
And of course don't forget SCBWI http://www.scbwi.org
your $95 membership entitles you to an online gallery plus profile.
http://dunked.com
Create your online portfolio in minutes. No coding skills required. 70,000 + creative people use Dunked to showcase their talent.
http://redframe.com
$16 per month online portfolio website.
www.portfoliobox.net
Create your own free website/portfolio, with upgrade options.
www.viewbook.com
$19 per month, portfolios created and presented wherever you need to showcase.
http://4ormat.com
$7 per month, create beautiful online portfolios that seamlessly display across any device.
https://crevado.com
Create online portfolios for free.
www.workbook.com
An important top source for professional illustration and photography portfolios.
Similar to Contact in that it's tied in with a print directory.
Prices from $800 to $3,350.
www.pixpa.com
Showcase, share and sell from $5 per month.
http://illustrationfriday.com
A meeting place for illustrators with regular illustration challenges and competitions.
http://artpickle.com
Another free online gallery for visual artists, upgrade to pro sites from $10 per month.
www.deviantart.com
A vast free, site featuring a whole array of artwork styles, with print sales and especially good for fantasy and 3D artists.
www.theaoi.com
The professional body for illustrators. £186 gives you membership for a year with all its associated benefits plus an online gallery of 24 images.
www.tumblr.com
Micro blogging site, hosting over 150 million blogs. Repository for interesting articles.
www.pinterest.com
Created in 2009 is now 3rd behind only Facebook and Twitter as the most popular Social Networking site. Online Pinboards can be used as shop front, galleries and portfolios.
Also, for writers, Pinterest is used for scrapbooks of plot details and theme boards as aids to writing.
www.padlet.com
Easy to use yet powerful collaborative 'wall of ideas', images and articles for storing and sharing. I'm just beginning to appreciate the usefulness of Padlet.
A huge and respected directory of children's illustrators. Prices for an online 30 image gallery start at $25 per month. For a premium rate of $250 per year your work in an e-book gets mailed out to 10,000 art buyers. They also print an annual directory and you can download and view each year's entire annual online here.
www.thelittlechimpsociety.com
Illustration galleries and news forum - join and get online for free.
www.smugmug.com
From $5 per month, create photo and illustration gallery websites.
www.illustratorsink.com
Mainly US based illustrator directory. Free as far as I can tell.
Shop Types
www.etsy.com
An excellent site for selling your hand made artwork and craft items. Use it as a gallery with shop attached. I know people have have earned thousands from their Etsy shop.
www.redbubble.com
'The' place to sell your artwork to others. One of the top and most respected sites, have your work featured on T shirts, iPad cases etc.
Here are two final sites from artists' agents representing top illustrators.
www.saahub.com
www.illustrationweb.com
Obviously there are loads of artists' agents and their online gallery sites.
You would need to approach the agency in question to get accepted onto their books before you can then appear on such a site.
So that's it for now.
I'd love to get some feedback from other SCBWI members, please let me know about the sites that have worked for you, the ones you dislike and of course the ones I've completely missed.
And be sure let me know as soon as you've received your first new job as a result!
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