Congrats to Russ Cox and Hazel Mitchell on their awards from NESCBWI!

I'm interrupting the usual Pixel Shavings illustration process blog postings to post some special news about two of our members, Russ Cox and Hazel Mitchell. Both came back with awards from the New England SCBWI Conference!

Congrats to Hazel on her second-place win in the People's Choice Award with her "Boy and World" image:

Hazel Mitchell with her print and NESCBWI award.

You can read Hazel's post about the NESCBWI event on her blog.

And congrats to Russ, who won THREE (!!) first-place awards at the conference with the Mother Goose piece he posted about in Pixel Shavings last week:

©2012 Russ Cox.

Russ won first place in the "Published", "People's Choice", and "The Richard Michelson Emerging Artist" categories, and his print will be hanging in the DZain Gallery and the R. Michelson Galleries in Massachusetts.

You can read Russ's post about the event in his blog. Russ also posted about the critique he received from HarperCollins creative director Martha Rago...fascinating insights, and I strongly urge illustrators to read his post.

I've already heard so many good things about the NESCBWI conference, but both Russ's and Hazel's posts (plus everyone's #nescbwi12 posts on Twitter) have convinced me that I really need to try attending this event next year. According to Harold Underdown, the event is scheduled for May 2nd weekend in 2013, so I've marked it in my calendar.

Hazel & Russ with illustrator pals at NESCBWI

Next up: the fabulous Fred Koehler, whose first picture book (Dad's Bad Day) launches in Spring 2014 from Penguin USA.

- Debbie Ridpath Ohi - Twitter: @inkyelbows

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