Recent Work - Freelance Spot Illustrations

I recently was hired to do 13 illustrations for "flashcards" to help kids learn the colors in Spanish. Each image has a story to help them remember the Spanish word for each color. Here are a few of my favorites out of the bunch.

Portfolio on Childrensillustrators.com!

After some careful and reasonable consideration I have decided to purchase a place to put my portfolio up on Childrensillustrators.com. It's quite a bit of money (at least for me) but if I get just one job out of it, it will pay for itself and then some. So my fingers are crossed for someone to contact me for some work! It is a very popular and well used site for finding children's illustrators. When I worked at Piggy Toes it was one of the first sites I was instructed to check to find illustrators, so I'm sure many other publishers do the same!

Here's a link to my portfolio page! Check it out, tell your friends, and share the link with others! Thanks to everyone for your support and encouragement!

Lauren Gallegos' Portfolio

The Ant and The Cricket - Cover

This illustration took longer to finish than it should have. I have been trying to work out some job and life issues lately, so I have been preoccupied. But things are settling down a little so hopefully I'll get back into a drawing rhythm!

The Ant and The Cricket - Spread 1

Spread 1 is done! YAY! It took a lot longer than I expected to complete it. But that's partly because I'm still getting used to the new technique I'm using. I will be entering this into a couple contests/art shows so critiques and feedback are welcome! (Although it'll have to be soon because I'm entering it tomorrow!) I'm also thinking about whether or not I should do all the spreads for the book, or just a few for my portfolio. I want to send it out soon! Very soon! We'll see I guess. Thoughts are welcome!

Life-Sized Cut-out

This weekend I (quickly) painted a life-sized cut-out of my College Pastor while he is on Sabbatical. It was fun to step away from the colored pencils for a few hours and pick up a paint brush. I didn't paint a face on him because we will be cutting out a picture of his face instead, as well as "decorating" him. Heehee!

I have to admit, it was a little freaky coming into my room and thinking there was a man standing there. And my cat got a little confused about it too...(you can see him in the picture checking out the curious cut-out man!)

The Ant and The Cricket - A New Approach

This is my third attempt at this drawing, and I'm not doing any more! This time I used a smooth Bristol paper and just Primsacolor Pencils. I'm thinking about doing the rest of the drawings like this instead of my usual textured technique. It pains me to consider dropping that technique, but it's really causing more trouble than it's worth. Plus, as much as I like the textured look, it doesn't allow me to put in much detail, and I LOVE delicate detail. So I guess it is a trade off. Now, FINALLY, I can move on to the rest of the drawings. Here we go!

Finishing 2009

Looking back on 2009, I have made a lot of growth as an artist and learned way more about publishing children's books than before this year. Some highlights of the year:

- I had the opportunity to do freelance work at Piggy Toes Press for about 6 months, which has grown me in many, many ways.
- I wrote my first children's book (all by myself!), illustrated it, and made it a book dummy that I sent out to publishers. (Still hoping to hear from them...)
- I found and refined my drawing technique for colored pencils.
- I graduated collete with a B.F.A. in Illustration!!
- I learned Dreamweaver all by myself and redesigned my website.
- I traveled to Israel! (Not artistic, but still very exciting!)
- I attended Illustrator's Day for the first time and was a winner of the Judges' Choice Portfolio Contest!

And there is SO much more...

It's been a great year of firsts, finishes, and transitions, and I hope for the same for 2010, except even BIGGER things....like being published, maybe???.... (fingers crossed!)

Look out 2010, Here I come!