[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":11},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-post-day-in-winchester":3},{"_type":4,"body":5,"bodyHtml":6,"excerpt":5,"featuredImage":5,"publishedAt":7,"slug":8,"tags":9,"title":10},"blogPost",null,"I went to the \u003Ca href=\"http://www.britishscbwi.org\">SCBWI\u003C/a> writers' conference this weekend. It felt really different than the usual illustrator events I go to. I couldn't quite place my finger on it ... perhaps 'earnest' is the word? Possibly illustrators are a bit more playful? Not sure. The morning trains to Winchester promised to be a mess, so I stayed overnight with the fabulous \u003Ca href=\"http://suezzzart.blogspot.com\">Sue Eves\u003C/a>. It was so much fun seeing  where she works. Among her many professional skills, she's a puppeteer and the person behind the BBC's Tamba puppet. She showed me a puppet that she had made to look like her dog, and it looked so real that she said it totally freaked him. I begged to see what he when she pulled out the puppet, but then her normally docile pet went into such hysterics that - in between giggles - I felt very guilty about asking. \\r\nOh, cool, she just e-mailed me a link to her partner's \u003Ca href=\"http://www.theshrine.uk.com\">website\u003C/a>. He's really into world music and gave me some CDs to listen to. (I'm listening to one right now. I love a lot of the world music I hear, but I never know which artists to look up!) \\r\n\\r\nWriter \u003Ca href=\"http://www.davidalmond.com\">David Almond\u003C/a> was the keynote speaker and I bought a gorgeous copy of his new chapter book, 'My Dad's a Birdman'. I have no idea if the story's any good yet, but the full colour illustrations by  \u003Ca href=\"http://www.pollydunbar.com\">Polly Dunbar\u003C/a> are really lush, especially the endpapers. (I reviewed her '\u003Ca href=\"http://www.writeaway.org.uk/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2071/Itemid,99999999/\">Penguin\u003C/a>' book awhile ago.) Candy Gourlay also gave a good talk about web networking and I pushed a sheet about Livejournal under people's noses. I was supposed to be on her panel, but she had so much to say about blogging that it didn't happen, and I was able to breathe easier. She does a good blog called \u003Ca href=\"http://notesfromtheslushpile.co.uk\">Notes from the Slush Pile\u003C/a>. She posted this great clip, Bernard Black's response to a rejection letter:\\r\n\\r\n\u003Clj-embed id=\"7\" />\\r\n\\r\nHere's a detail from a flier I just did for my local church. (You can click \u003Ca href=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2207/2062586185_a0bc8c1904_o.jpg\">here\u003C/a> to see the whole thing.) Originally I thought I was only going to do it in two-colour printing (red and black), but the brief changed at the last minute to full colour. I kept the limited palette but added a yellowed background and brown. Now the black people don't have red skin, possibly a very good thing, even though the white people still have a hundreds of pimples. I kind of like the retro look.\\r\n\\r\n\u003Cimg src=\"\\r\nhttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2331/2063462690_7349419daa_o.jpg\">\\r\n\\r\n\u003Ci>Oh, can anyone please please help me? See the fabric of the baby carrier in this image? I couldn't figure out how in Photoshop to get rid of the white undertones and make them yellowish. Does anyone know how to do that? I did it in Monotone, making the colors red. But when I tried Duotone with the yellow-cream, it just made the red more pinkish. If I turned up the yellow in the Color Balance, it just affected the reds, not the white. How do I get it to turn the white into yellow-cream?\u003C/i>\\r\n\\r\n\u003Cimg src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2107/2063519134_e4709957e4_o.jpg\">","2007-11-25T19:17:00.000Z","day-in-winchester",[],"day in winchester",1776628721594]