Take A Look Sunday – Priscilla Prentice

T2 Children’s Illustrators is a diverse group of dedicated, timely, and enthusiastic illustrators and writers from across the United States and several countries abroad. Our focus is on children’s picture book and juvenile educational publishing. But our expertise does not stop there. T2 Illustrators have collaborated on advertising campaigns, editorial features, toys, games, gifts, children’s apps, and e-books. We’re a well-versed group ready to meet your needs.

Nicole and Jeremy Tugeau are the agent/owners behind the T2 Team. They are ecstatic about their ever-growing agency, and they are committed to working hard for the network of illustrators who surround them. Nicole heads up the agency on a day-to-day basis.

What she enjoys most about being an Agent is the partnership-making, the relationships and of course the success stories. Jeremy is a long-time children’s illustrator, and he continues to work as an artist in this field while maintaining some involvement with T2 Illustrators as a creative resource and promotional guru.

HERE’S NICOLE:

Priscilla is a capable and experienced illustrator who has put forth an illustration sequence for review.  I most enjoy Priscilla’s rich colors, consistency of colors and depth of the pictures. The pictures are well thought and well designed with excellent use of light and shadow. The details in every picture are inviting and original. I’m very impressed! I also like the combination of hand drawing and digitally expressing the line and color. Priscilla is able to maintain a traditional feel.

Priscilla’s sequence features two main characters, a boy and young woman. In the first picture the young woman is receiving a toy from a little boy in what looks like a daycare or school setting. The age of the woman is unclear to me. Her face looks adult-ish, but her hair braids suggest youth. The patches on the jacket suggest she may be in need?? And the gloves and boots suggest she’s just come in from the cold. I assumed that the little boy is receiving the toy from the woman based solely on the difference in age. But after further consideration it crossed my mind that the boy could be gifting the toy to the woman (who could quite possible be a young teen). After further, further consideration it occurred to me that the duo could be collecting broken toys to fix. Ah-ah! Cues to further identify the action, age and relationships in this first picture will go a long way: facial expressions, eye contact, and gesture. IF the toy is broken maybe that could be expressed more clearly in the illustration. The older, main character boy standing in the background is dressed for the outdoors as well. So I assume the two older characters are acting together in the narrative.

In the next two pictures, however, it’s unclear just exactly how connected the two characters are.  And it what ways they work together The second picture is a beautifully quiet piece inside the boy’s garage/workroom.  He is hard at work. He appears smaller and younger seated at the workbench, smaller and younger than when he was first introduced in the preschool interior. The details of the name tags on the toys is most intriguing here. It occurred to me that the story might be furthered or grounded if a name tag was on the spaceship.

In the third picture the young woman is leaving a workshop with a shiner (assuming ‘repaired’) spaceship. I like her expression of eagerness to deliver. The workshop is not the same place as the garage, there are no clues to link the two places, so I’m left asking questions again about why the boy doesn’t go with the girl to deliver the spaceship, why the little boy was important in the first image, what the sign says (I can’t read it) and so on.  There seems to be such a large narrative surrounding these pictures, I know I’m grasping at what is in between or what’s next, but it’s important that the pictures answer these questions for the reader. If the two older characters are working together, it’s interesting, because they appear to be like stranger to each other in the pictures.

There is such great mood in the artwork and depth to the technique. My constructive comments are focused on the consistency of the boy character and the storyline itself. Priscilla, I wish you the very best as you work this story to completion

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Thank you Nicole for sharing your thoughts and expertise with us. I look forward to next Sunday.

Here’s Priscilla’s bio:

Priscilla Prentice is an illustrator and designer. She studied illustration at Rhode Island School of Design.  She has worked as an animator, video game artist, graphic designer and illustrator. She illustrated the children’s books When You Just Have to Roar and Teacher’s Promise, written by Rachel Roberston for Redleaf Lane. Priscilla works in Photoshop and illustrator and combines hand drawn art with digital art to make her illustrations. Her portfolio can be viewed at her personal web site http://priscillaprentice.com/ or on Behance https://www.behance.net/PriscillaPrentice

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

If you do not have an agent and would like to be featured and hear what is working or how it could be tweaked to help you sell your work, then please send Two or Three SEQUENTIAL illustrations (Two/three with the SAME “story/characters‎”) to:

Kathy.temean (at) gmail.com. Illustrations should be at least 500 pixels wide and your name should be in the .jpg title. Please put ILLUSTRATOR PORTFOLIO in the subject area and include a blurb about yourself that I can use to introduce you to everyone.

Each Sunday one illustrator will be featured.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy