Thanks @Henry-Mosley ! After what was said about the prompt on the critique arena zoom call, I decided I should get rid of the characters and focus in on lots more environmental detail and props to tell the story. I’ll start working on that next, but here is some progress on the color and lighting. I’m pretty new to Procreate, and this feels much more like my analog style than my entry last month when I was still struggling to figure out what brushes to use. Learning new software is rough!
@patricialamas I think it looks better without all the characters, less busy and procreate is great once you start to figure things out!
@patricialamas Very cute additions - though I don't read the raccoon as sinister. I can't quite see his face so to me he looks just as well intentioned as any of the other animals.
@patricialamas I love your color palette! 
Progress on fleshing out the details. I am having way too much fun with this.
@patricialamas I love the way your illustration is progressing, such warmth in the colours and the added texture works well along with the shadows. You make me want to get an I-Pad and work in Procreate.
@PenAndrew I held out so long on getting an iPad, and it made such a huge difference once I finally did this January! With my Wacom tablet and ancient computer I always felt like I was hitting undo more than actually drawing, plus the portability of the iPad makes it so much easier to hide from my toddler while I work. 
@patricialamas Yes, thanks for sharing the advantages, though I would say, seeing your work is the biggest encouragement to buying an I-Pad. My other concern with working digitally is getting too many headaches. What is it like working for long hours on the I-Pad?
Nearing completion now, but thinking about ways to make the scene look more alive without necessarily adding characters since that’s not in the prompt. Any ideas? Might do an open window in one of the dormers, a sandwich board with a menu, maybe some actual seating…
@PenAndrew I have to admit that there are such drawbacks! I probably don’t work enough each day to get headaches from the screen, but one major struggle is drawing at night. I don’t use the blue light filter because obviously it distorts the colors, and it’s sooo hard to fall asleep if I stay up late drawing.
@patricialamas Thanks for this information. Do you work from the sketch to the finished work all on Procreate? And how long does an image from start to finish take roughly?
@PenAndrew it depends! Preliminary sketches do tend to flow better for me on real paper, and I’ll often take a picture of a very rough sketch then do my refinements as new layers in photoshop or procreate. For me and probably a lot of others who learned to draw on paper first, it’s harder to get the same kind of initial energy in an image with digital tools. For this specific prompt, I did a bunch of blobby silhouettes with a chisel marker in my sketchbook, then imported my favorite to procreate and drew on top of it. As for timeframe, procreate is telling me I’ve spent a total of 22 hours on this treehouse so far. That’s probably a lot longer than I’d want to spend if I needed to be profitable making such art right now, but I know from experience with other mediums (e.g. my former life as a cake decorator) that speed will come with practice. I’ve only had the iPad since January and am just starting to feel like I don’t hate everything I draw on it. New tools always entail a very awkward and frustrating learning period!
@patricialamas Thanks for such a thorough and interesting reply. I agree with you about the transition from traditional to digital, and I think traditional artists have the advantage as they know what they want and they know about application of paint and have existing skills that easily transfer. I agree about the length of time getting quicker, for my image I used watercolour and pencils which took about 2 hours after the ideas stage, and then I photographed the image and repainted certain parts and cleaned up the line work etc, this took me about 7-8 hours. I use the digital process like a clean up process as I don't have much experience, but I found my first and second digital images were satisfactory because I already knew how to paint first.
@PenAndrew I held out so long on getting an iPad, and it made such a huge difference once I finally did this January! With my Wacom tablet and ancient computer I always felt like I was hitting undo more than actually drawing, plus the portability of the iPad makes it so much easier to hide from my toddler while I work.
