Thanks for a very thoughtful response, @StudioLooong . Your answer is helping me ask myself some more specific questions. I want to illustrate kids' books most of all. I think what I want to know is if I am good enough to be reaching out to publishers and agents right now, or if I ought to be focusing on getting some real work practice under my belt first.

thanks everyone for the feedback! It looks like A and C (my most and least favourite) are neck and neck so I may flesh out both of them a bit more!

@AnneWertheim awesome artwork-love it!

@carolinebautista I’m curious if anyone responds because I’m not sure you need to if you aren’t selling the piece, and you’ve made many changes with it. But I’m not super well versed here so I’m interested in if anyone has insights. HOWEVER, I’ve done something similar before using music for a video on YouTube and I just reached out to the person and asked if I could use their music with credit and they were happy to let me use it. So I would assume that you could just write her and showed her the image you created and asked if she was okay with you using the image in your portfolio with credit in the description. Not an expert at all here, but that’s what I would do. Sorry if that wasn’t helpful lol

@Molambo Haha, I was thinking father too but went with brother. Yeah, agreed, it's crazy what Todd Mcfarlane is trying to do with his expanded Spawn universe now. More power to him!

@xin-li so far the idea had only been interesting to me as a version of a publisher business model that would deal with international artists, not sure why except as a sort of publisher of standalone images, something that is never the focus of picture book makers. But the idea of a local collective sounds really fun the way you describe it. If this pandemic would ever end...

@Katherine Thank you for the compliment on my work!! I'm so glad my post did not seem negative to you.. i almost deleted it after i wrote it because it seemed unhelpful and possibly damaging. I love Tom Waits - I listened to that NPR interview with Tom Waits 18 'ish years ago!

I noticed on INS that some artists often repost images by other artists, in their "stories" section. I wonder if it's part of some strategy to gain followers or make connections (because particularly for some artists, I noticed they "repost" on the days they don't have new post themselves), or is it as simple as the Twitter "retweets" -- whenever one sees a lovely image, repost it? Thank you!

Great job! I love how your characters turned out. This was fun for me to see as I'm in the middle of this class right now! The class really is helpful and I feel more confident having a process to follow for character design. Thanks for sharing!

@jimsz Thanks! Do you mean they will save a couple of hundred dollars or thousands of dollars ? Has anyone compared accountant and using Turbo Tax ?

Hello! As someone who has never published a book, I can't say for sure. But I'm pretty sure they talk about it in this 3 Point Perspective podcast episode: https://www.svslearn.com/3pointperspectiveblog/2019/4/11/how-to-become-a-better-childrens-book-artist Hope this helps!

@carlianne I totally see your art in comic format. Would be really interesting reading comic stories from you. I was huge indie comic reader some years back. My passion for narrative art started with reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi‎'s biographical comics. I am following Lucy Knisley's biographical comic since 2007 when her first book was out :-). Right now, I really love Grant Snider's comic (he also does beautiful, simple and profound children's books :-).

Hi Richard, funny, Im from NZ to but living in Germany at the moment. Also new to SVS and enjoying the many great classes

Hi all, I'm starting a personal project and wanted to keep this thread for a bit of accountability and feedback from you all as you've helped a lot in the past. It is an illustrated non-fiction book aimed at adults, the subject is basically A-Z of creative films. Think of Nobrow books like this: https://nobrow.net/shop/the-art-of-drag/ or this merlin.pl/wielcy-muzycy-wielcy-ludzie-robert-janowski/8337976/ The layout I'm thinking is a full page illustration of the film in the shape of the letter it represents, a page of text with facts etc, and spot illustrations. Here is my first sketch for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I'd love to know your thoughts.

@Molambo Thank you, I needed to hear that today

@LauraA Thanks for staying up so late! We need to do some kind of Turbocharging reunion! A "Where are they now" kind of thing. I love watching you guys progress in your skills and careers!

@donnamakesart There's this one art channel I follow on youtube called Art Prof. They make all sorts of videos covering a lot of different aspects of art. Recently they've been working on imaginary landscapes or backgrounds. It might help you to get started without any pressure, and to just have some fun It's fun to watch, and they usually have some really good pieces of advice throughout the video. Be forewarned though, the videos are about an hour and a half long each. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4nhFgoQx90

@Nyrryl-Cadiz @KayPotter Yes, I could, but that would be a last resort. Thanks!