Creative Composition Final Assignment Feedback please!

[Isabell Fregoso]

Here's my final assignment for creative composition which required you to make a composition illustrating the sentence: "quickly the the little salamander scampered down to the forest floor and hid from the squirrel" and to include at least 25 items.

(please excuse the floating head in the left hand side by the tree lol, was using this as a doodle page initially)

Not sure what to put in the bottom left and right corners? Was thinking about making a dark gradient that blends into the trees sort of thing. Also not sure what medium to color this in? What do you guys think?

[Asyas_illos]

@Isabell-Fregoso it’s really great I think, from what I can tell, it is a bit sketchy so it’s a little hard to read. I like your style it’s very fun! I didn’t know this was an assignment it must be from the updated version, I’ll have to check it out again!

[kayleenartlover]

@Asyas_illos it's the one that has penguins on the image of the class

[Isabell Fregoso]

@Asyas_illos Thanks for the feedback! Yes this must be the updated version

[Melissa_Bailey]

@Isabell-Fregoso great style! Love your sketchy lines and the movement in them.

As far as story, that's not coming through as clearly for me. Are the squirrels throwing acorns at the salamander?

The other thing you may want to consider is what part of the story you're illustrating. The salamander is on a path, but he doesn't look like he's scampering or hiding. What if he was placed more in the foreground, scampering off the page? (Or looking like he'll scamper off the page.) From the text, it seems like the salamander is the main character, but in the illustration, because he is small, he may get lost. If I looked at this without the text, I wouldn't have thought that the salamander was the main character.

Again, you've got some great things going on here! Looking forward to seeing your progress on this piece.

[kirsten-mcg]

@Isabell-Fregoso This is such a fun and lively scene. I'm guessing the salamander is worried because he doesn't want the greedy squirrels to steal his acorn? As @Melissa_Bailey said, it's a little hard to tell right now that the salamander is the main character. You could move him closer to the foreground, maybe having him crawling into the bottom left hand corner? That would take care of what to put in that corner and you could fill in the other with vegetation. Or another idea is that you could fill in both corners with vegetation, but keep them fairly dark and non distracting to help direct our attention towards the salamander. I think if you used color and value the right way you could make him come across as the main character, even if you kept him exactly where he was. Making him the most saturated spot of color on the page, and having him and his immediate surroundings be brighter than the rest of the picture could really help him to be the focal point.

[Griffin McPherson]

I think more elements of the prompt could be included. You’ve included the nouns like "salamander, squirrel, forest floor", but not the actions like, "quickly, scampered, hid". The actions are really what you want to focus on in just about any illustration. It can help to think about how the illustration reads with the prompt in mind. The liveliness of your style is great but putting more attention on the concept is what could really make the illustration stand out.