Coloring Book Signing

Sydney and Sarah get their Horse Show coloring books signed

An impromptu coloring book signing occurred last weekend at a barn party I was attending. Knowing that I would be there, two little girls – Sydney and Sarah – brought their “My Day At The Horse Show” coloring books to show me. They proudly showed off their most excellent coloring and their own special stories. Then they asked me to sign their books for them. It was a true treat to see such happiness coming from the coloring books that I had created!

Here are some pictures to tell the tale. (And by the way, I think both girls have true coloring talent!)

Color on everyone!

Now taking...credit cards!

It's a big day here at Flying Pony Studios. As of today, I am able to take credit card payments  for product and services! I felt that being able to take more forms of payments would make it easier and more convenient for my clients purchasing everything from greeting cards to illustration services.

Flying Pony Studios now accepts cash, personal checks, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover.

As I begin my second coloring book, I can't help but think that the timing of the all is perfect. :-)

Website Upgrades

Over the past few days I have done a massive upgrading to the Flying Pony Studios website. Several pages needed to be added and a few existing ones needed face-lifting. Here’s a quick overview of what has changed.

The home page is now more fun and funky, and I hope, more user-friendly. With the added pages I felt that the old design wouldn’t present as well for viewing. I think the new one works better. Hopefully you will too.

Speaking of the added pages …you will notice that I now have a section on the homepage called, “Logos.” I have been creating logos and business identity packages (including packaging) for many years. As I have recently had the call to do a few new logos for clients, I thought I would add those skills to my online list of skills-for-hire. On the new logo page you can see samples of logos that I have done, as well as price packages for logos, business cards, and letterhead design. This is part of the Illustration section of the website, where you can also see samples of my illustration work, illustration rates, my CV, and other helpful information about me.

The next set of fresh pages are connected to my new online comic called “Horse Life.” I had been posting it in my blog but found that the images were really too small for enjoyable reading. This meant that I would need to host the comic on my website instead. So that’s now where you’ll find all previous “Horse Life” comics and all future pages. I have also designed an Archive page which has links to all of the existing pages. You can also navigate through the comic pages with the navigation buttons on each page. The most current page will always be found on the “Horse Life Current” page.

The last change that I have made is that I have a free gift available to all who sign up for my mailing list and newsletter. The gift is clip art created by me for your use. While it’s not copyright free, I do give you permission to use it for personal use. To get it simply click the “free gift” button on the home page. That will take you to it.

And speaking of my newsletter, “Flying Free”…I do realize that I have been shamefully lax in sending it out recently. But that will change very soon. Now that the move to our new house is over, I have great plans to get out more information out to readers on a regular basis. There are lots of new things in store in 2012, and I intend to write about them and share them with you.

Additionally, and this is not new news but bears repeating, you can get to my on-line store from the “store” button on the homepage. I have been finding that PayPal seems a bit daunting as a payment option for many people so…in the near future there will be the addition of credit card payments for all Flying Pony (and Sacred Touch Healing) products and services. Further news on this to come in the near future.

I think that about sums it all up for now. At this point Flying Pony Studios is up and running as a full-service design studio. Of course, I do other things too, like creating children’s books and pet portraits, but if you’re looking for illustrations or graphic design, please remember, I’m your gal!

Bye for now! - Sara

Exciting news!

Merry Christmas a bit early!

As of today you can buy both the EBook (digital download) and spiral-bound (physical) versions of “My Day at the Horse Show” in my web store: www.flyingponystudios.com/Store_home.html.

Hurrah!
I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately for the physical version of the coloring book and now you can get your very own for $10.00 + tax.  These cute coloring books make perfect stocking stuffer gifts for all the junior horse lovers in your house (along with anyone else you know who loves to color!) As an added plus, if you’re local, you can get a copies directly from me without needing to pay for shipping. Wow! So stock up today!

In case you’ve not seen my video about the coloring book…you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/cresciangirl?feature=mhee#p/a/u/0/AV8lR4eEm3Q

Happy Veterans/Remembrance Day everyone!

I have created my very first video for YouTube!

OK, OK, I do feel somewhat behind the times, but all the same...today is the day! Here is my new video which presents a tour of my new coloring book. I hope it makes you smile!

Are you ready to color?

“My Day at the Horse Show: A Tell Your Own Story” coloring EBook is now available for digital download at my web store.

 

It’s been a long road. It’s taken a lot of faith. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve done a children’s book, and even though this one is self-published, it was no less work. But as the process of creation is completed I realize that I have really missed doing books for kids. A lot. Now that I’m back in the swing, I have several more coloring books, paper doll books, and a cartoon book in the design phase.

So what’s so special about this coloring book?

I put a lot of thought into how to make this coloring book a little bit different. I decided to make it an EBook because I wanted to give colorists a chance to re-use the pages. If you don’t like the way you’ve colored a page you can just print out another one and start again. Or, you can color different pages in different ways. It also allowed me to charge less per book. At $5.00 I felt that it would be approachable even in these tight economic times.

More features

One of the things I’m particularly excited about in this book are the fill-in-the-blank captions on every page. This allows everyone to make it their story, told their way. I have also included a helpful list of horse show terms to give you further ideas for your horse show adventure.

Too old to color? Think again

I believe that many artists have been set up for success in art by their early experiences with coloring books and crayons. The simplicity of the crayon is so non-threatening that even art-shy adults can use it with confidence. With fine art crayons you may feel the specter of “making a mistake” looming behind every corner. Not so with Crayolas. Try them for yourself and see. With crayons come a sense of artistic freedom plucked straight out of childhood.  

You’re invited

I invite you to visit my shop and take a look at the new coloring book. If you like it please give it a try. If you really like it please recommend it to friends. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to play with and I hope that many will. After all, what else is a coloring book for?

Cheers to all!

Sara

P.S. I have put up a new information page about the coloring book here on my blog. You can find it under the "Resources" tab on the right hand column. While you're there you'll also see pages that collect my How-to and Art Supplies product review articles. Check them out!

Flying Free Issue #1

I have just posted the first issue of my newsletter “Flying Free” on my website. Each month Flying Free provides simple art and design tips for artists of all ages and skill levels. This month’s topic is Clip Art: How to use it to enhance your documents and DIY projects.

The topics covered in the first issue are:

• Terrific Ways to Use Clip Art
• Colorizing Clip Art
• 7 Easy Steps to Adding Clip Art to Your Word Document
• Getting Personalized Clip Art Made For You

You can read the newsletter here.

If you’d like to sign up for future issues of Flying Free (and download some free clip art while you’re at it!) just go to my website and follow the directions.  By signing up you will not only get lots of art and studio tips delivered to your mailbox monthly but you’ll also gain access to special subscriber features like limited release clip art and other fun stuff.

If using clip art interests you and you’d would like to read a more detailed article about using clip art for your craft and art projects I have also written “How to Use Clip Art - 8 Terrific Ways to Use Copyright Free Images” for the website Ezine articles.

And don’t forget…the My Day at the Horse Show coloring EBook will be available for purchase this week in my web store! Stay tuned right here for all the details!

My Day At The Horse Show

Here is the cover of my first coloring book, "My Day At The Horse Show." It will be available as an EBook for digital download next week from my website store. More details to follow... *happy smile*

Coloring Book Facts

A coloring (colouring) book is a type of book containing line art for a reader to add color using crayons, colored pencils, marker pens, paint or other artistic media. Although coloring books are generally used by children, coloring books for adults are also available.

According to Wikipedia, the McLoughlin Brothers are credited as being the inventors of the coloring book in the 1880's. The Little Folks' Painting Book was produced in collaboration with well-known children’s book illustrator, Kate Greenaway.

Another coloring book pioneer was Richard F. Outcault, creator of Buster Brown. Although today most people associate “Buster Brown” with the Brown Shoe Company, Buster was actually created in 1902 as part of an independent comic strip. Buster Brown was a young city-dwelling boy with wealthy parents. His strip featured the first talking pet to appear in American comics, a pit bull named Tige. Buster's Paint Book came out in 1907.

As a predominately non-verbal medium, coloring books have seen wide applications in education in some cases where target groups do not speak and understand the primary language of instruction or communication. This can be seen in the use of coloring books in Guatemala to teach children about hieroglyphs and Mayan artist patterns.

Since the 1980's, several publishers have also produced educational coloring books intended for studying graduate-level topics such as anatomy and physiology, where color-coding detailed diagrams are used as a learning aid.

Why coloring books?

By the end of this week I hope to have my first coloring book up for sale as an EBook on my website. The creation of this coloring book is the culmination of many years of process for me as a children’s illustrator and writer. Coloring is an activity that brings us all back to the time before many of us stopped enjoying the creative and expansive delights of making art. To a time before we experienced the frustration of not being able to portray the world we see around us accurately.

According to Betty Edwards, author of the landmark book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, “The majority of adults in the Western World do not progress in art skills much beyond the level of development they reached at age nine or ten.” This is the stage when children become fascinated by realism. This is also the stage of development where if correct and useful artistic guidance is not received by the child, their art skills stultify and eventually go into a permanent state of artistic crisis.

The beginning of adolescence creates a conflict for children between their increasingly complex perceptions of the world around them and their current level of artistic skills. They simply don’t know how to draw what they are seeing, correctly. Before the age of nine, children are less interested in realism and more interested in portraying feelings in their drawings. As any parent knows, these earlier drawings are not realistic, but certainly prolific. After the age of nine, children become desperate to capture the world as it actually is.

As an educator, I have always felt strongly that children can and should be taught how to draw accurately. They want it and we owe it to them as teachers to provide that education to them. But as many art teachers do not have a great deal of confidence in their own abilities to teach the art of seeing, they may have trouble assisting the child as required. I believe it is of benefit to every artist and teacher to look back into their own past and see if they still carry any of the blocks that may have been put there by careless comments and poor teachers. Once the blocks begin to loosen, we can begin to experience the boundless creativity and fun associated with expressing the world confidently through art once again.

The Busiest Week!

I realize that I haven’t written here in a little while. When I last posted (about two weeks ago) all was proceeding along expected and “normal” lines. That is to say, my coloring book was nearly completed, but for the captions, an introduction, and glossary of terms. But the artwork was done! Yeah!

Then, out of the blue, a whirlwind picked me up like a mystical sandstorm and flung me up into the air!

With extremely little effort we found a house to buy (our first!), I moved my horse to a lovely new farm (after 3 years at the old one), suddenly my class on Flower Essences for Pets (which I had thought canceled due to lack of interest) was ON and with only about 12 hours notice to prepare. Not to mention the regular coordination of my weekly animal massages, business meetings for design projects, and, did I mention that we’re BUYING A HOUSE?!?

It was crazy!

Amazingly all went beautifully and smoothly. Yesterday I took a little time off and rode my pony around the new farm. What a delight!

Thumbs up for my first ride at the new farm.

Today, with my feet back on the ground at last, I am finally able to start thinking about my coloring book again. As a prequel to seeing the actual completed book (to be unveiled here VERY soon) I thought I’d share a coloring book image that I completed today for a friend who has a very cute dog named Bella. Here are both the pen and ink and colored images (colored in Crayolas of course!) 

Bella as a pen and ink image ready to color.
Copyright Sara Light-Waller, 2011.

 

Bella colored with Crayola crayons..
Copyright Sara Light-Waller, 2011.

Who ever said you can't do a portrait in crayons? *smile*

Coloring book update

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. In the past three weeks I've gotten a strained knee, replaced my windshield unexpectedly, replaced all four tires, again unexpectedly, replaced my cell phone (broken speaker), added new massage clients, been working on two logos, advertising a flower essence class, AND deciding to buy our first house (second attempt since the crash of 2008 when we last tried). Phew! What with this and that, my coloring book has gotten a bit of a bum rush. But no longer. I just finished illustration #10 today and that means 2 more to go. I'm glad because I'm really liking the process. I think I could spend great deals of time creating pictures to color. I hope to do just that! ;-) 

Adventures in Pen and ink: it’s all about the line.

As I inch towards the completion of my first coloring book, I wanted to stop and reflect for a moment on the importance of good ink. I have already talked a bit about the fact that I’m a pen fiend, always looking for a pen that can perform well in pen & ink work. I am VERY picky. For my coloring book images I have been using my Noodler’s Flex pen (bless its little split nib!) and a couple of Pitt pens for heavier lines.

Having found a couple of pens that I like, the next thing to discover was a good ink to put in them. I have used Higgins Black Magic ink for dip pens for a long time but wouldn’t dare put that in my fountain pens. I don’t even want to guess what that ink would do to them! Instead, I've gone for proper fountain pen inks. I have tried both Noodler’s and Platinum inks so far. I really like Noodler’s Lexington Grey ink for drawings. It’s not as dark as black but still pretty dark. It’s waterproof and doesn’t have a terribly long drying time.

I also keep a little “stable” of pens on my taboret filled with a variety of colored inks. Sometimes, I'm testing the inks and sometimes, I just like having certain pens available with certain inks in them.

Here’s my current line-up.

Parker Sonnet with Noodler’s “bulletproof” Black
Flex nib #1 with Noodler’s Lexington Grey ink
Flex nib # 2 with Noodler’s Blue Nose Bear (I haven’t really put this one through its paces yet. But I'm excited about it.)
Piston fill # 1 with Noodler’s Lexington Grey ink
Piston fill # 2 with Noodler’s Polar Brown ink (A good brown so far!)
Platinum Preppy fountain pen with Noodler’s Nikita (I like this ink – it’s fun.)
Platinum Preppy fountain pen with Noodler’s Squeteague (I LOVE this blue-green ink. It's very pretty.)
Platinum Preppy marker with Noodler’s Whaleman’s Sepia (Too dry for my fountain pen I like it in the marker. Also, it turned the chamber of my Flex nib clear demonstrator neon green. :-( No one knows why.)

For those who don't know about Platinum Preppies, they are pretty decent cheap fountain pens. Sometimes they will give me a drip of ink but they are great for testing ink samples. I like having them around and for the price – they’re really great!

Ink sample sheet

What about coloring books for kids?

Like so many other kids, I grew up with coloring books. I did love them. It was my first venture into art! I still have a healthy collection of Dover coloring books (http://store.doverpublications.com/) on my shelves to use as reference of historic scenes and certain natural subjects (like hawks, for example.)

The best coloring book artists do a wonderful job producing very clean and easy-to-read line drawings. There’s a great deal of technical skill in those drawings and I have always admired them. So much so that I have decided to create my own line of e-coloring books for kids. The first one will be called “My Day At the Horse Show.” I hope to have some hard-copy prototypes ready to present at one of the largest Hunter-Jumper horse shows in the area next month.

I'm quite excited about using an e-book format for coloring books. Not only will it be economical to produce but it'll also be a great way for parents to get multiple uses out of each page. Mistake…? More than one child? No problem! Just print out another page! ;-)

Here is a detail from one of my images. What do you think?

Image copyright Sara Light-Waller, 2011