Wolf Criers Club
Vol 26
Thanks to our new subscribers to The Wolf Criers Club over the holidays, we’ve had a boost as one year turns into the next. Last spring, the Wolf Criers launched this newsletter to chart our collective journey in the world of illustration and publishing. Learning to talk about our work is an important component of an artistic venture. This Substack is a practice space where we learn to speak about our work and share milestones.
The Wolf Criers Club came together because of an online class called Children's Book Pro from the School of Visual Storytelling (SVS LEARN). The coursework and instructors were top-notch. The only class feature missing was a live student-to-student experience.
The most satisfying online classes I’ve encountered include a cohort model of engagement. These classes include message boards to share our work and comment and live sessions featuring instructors answering questions posed in a chat but no real-time student interaction.
Having many years of experience running peer mentoring groups and masterminds, I offered a weekly meet-up that anyone with the time and interest was invited to join. These were live sessions meant to help participants keep up with classwork and get through the course.
While some people left when the course ended, a core of about 14 of us stayed. Instead of weekly, we changed the schedule to twice a month. As we continued to meet, we discussed the potential of a communal email list and community for our work. The idea for a newsletter came from this realization.
We introduced the Wolf Crier Club members throughout our first year of making this newsletter. They are available to all subscribers and can be found in our archive.
Thanks for joining us on this journey. We would enjoy hearing about your creative pursuits this new year. Please share your stories in the comments.
Potent Makers on Substack
Some of you might be new to Substack. The writer/illustrator/arts community is vibrant in this space. I encourage you to scroll around and check out who is here.
I’ve listed a handful of notable arts-centric offerings I’ve encountered over this past year. If you have a fun Substack newsletter, please tell us in the comments.
Social Media Escape Club
Social media loses power when we build community in other places. That’s why your next big breakthrough will happen with other creative people. It’s a big world out there, filled with lots of creative people, and that’s why opportunities exist outside of social media.
Letters from Love with Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert is a lifelong traveler and spiritual seeker. More than anything else, she just wants everyone to have a nice time.
Looking at Picture Books with Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
Picture books are real literature. The best ones are artworks as great as any books humans have made. But like all children’s literature, picture books are misunderstood and undervalued, a centuries-old problem we expect to have fixed after two or three posts.
DrawTogether with WendyMac
Part Mr. Rogers, part Bob Ross, part jumpy-castle party—DrawTogether is an educational drawing universe that grows kids-of-all-ages’ creativity, curiosity and confidence through the joyful act of art-making.
Notes on Illustration
My name is Giuseppe Castellano. For twenty years, I worked as a children’s book art director at Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House. What I write on Substack comes from the lessons I’ve learned as an art director and educator, insights gained from podcast guests, stories I’ve read and written about illustration history, and more. Everything you need to know about being an illustrator—in one place.
While this one is not an arts-specific offering, The Solopreneur Success Stack from Scott Perry provides insights into defining and achieving your goals and hosts an interactive community of people from many fields and different parts of the globe.
Check out our archive to read selections from our individual
Wolf Crier Club members.
Here’s a poll that will help us know a little more about who is running with us on this adventure - also we wanted to see how polls work on Substack:
Kato McNickle composed this week’s newsletter.
Wolf Criers Club is a collective of illustrators, writers, innovators, and wolves. We explore aspects of dynamic storytelling each week through pictures and words, how to improve, and where to take it next. Why not run with us?
If you enjoy this post, please share it with arts-minded friends and subscribe or follow Wolf Criers Club on Substack for weekly updates.
The wolf-wearing-glasses logo is by Wolf Crier Michael Luk.