Picture This

Rita Tu is a freelance illustrator based out of NJ, and an MFA Illustration grad from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She has won numerous awards in the field of illustration. We talked on this episode of My Creative Life about her career.  To see more of Rita's work  Visit RitaTu.com  or IG @RitaTu Listen to the interview at My Creative Life.

I noticed in the FB group I'm in that there were some questions about this. It's relevant to know these terms: trim, bleed, live area, and gutter. It's really important as an illustrator that you provide your client with the correct file size. I created this video to help explain the terms.

In this episode, I got to talk with award-winning children's book illustrator Marjorie Crosby-Fairall. She is based out of Australia. Here is more about Marjorie. When I was a little girl I escaped to the library as often as possible where I spent hours devouring picture books and minutely examining their illustrations. I was very young when I decided to become an illustrator like my then-favorite illustrator C.W. Anderson (what little girl doesn’t love horse drawings?). Encouraged by my creative family, I gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from Northern Illinois University. Following my move to Australia, I worked in many areas of illustration, including picture book illustrations. I live in Sydney with my husband and son and spend my days happily illustrating books in the company of my dog, Junior. I love to experiment with new techniques for my illustrations, but always seem to return to my beloved and well-used color pencils. Released Nov...

I've made a video 2. I'm posting on the weekends. Currently working at a sweet little coffee shop and getting some classwork done for my graduate class and getting a video posted. I'm getting all the business stuff done today. Saturday is a good time to do it. I'm posting links to my videos, adding to Instagram stories. The things that every artist just loves to do, said No artist ever. I've learned to try and start treating my work as a business. I had a talk with a writer from work. He has had several books published in the SCFI genre. Discussed the nature of creative work. I want to make it a full-time job and still do some teaching on the side. I told him I feel like there is always the push in school to try and shoot for excellence which is great. I'm practical in my old age. It would be great to be a Caldecott winner, or place gold in some prestigious illustration contest. When I was first working I did get into the SILA competition. Who has the mo...

Everyone has their own way of sending out promotional material to prospective clients. In the past I've had postcards printed and mailed them out or sent out letter size print outs. These days I do things differently. I like something about having more of a hands on involvement with my mailers. I gang my images on letter size doc in InDesign. Then I make a PDF of the pages. Then I go to my local staples to get it printed out in color on premium white paper. I find I just don't get the quality I want off of my own printer. I hand cut the images out. It's not too bad since they are 4up. The images are spray mounted on to cover stock paper that I've used my regular pinter to print my contact info on the back. I feel like the final looks better then the old postcards I sent out. There is hand quality to it and I'm not stuck with way more postcards then I need. Work changes and evolves and this method allows me more control on the quantity and quality. I make inner ...