Walking home.

[Jake Parker]

Oh wow! I love it. What a great concept for a piece. I really want to know the story behind this.

Also, I didn't catch the sleeping dragon at first. It was a nice easter egg.

[Ryan Sutherland]

@Jake-Parker cheers man. i was going to work on two more pieces to go with this one before of them fishing and one after of them sleeping in front of the fire. for some folio content, i think it was Will that mentioned in a video of his, to do 3 pages of a story for folio stuff. i liked that idea.
i was going for a surreal look with the fishes and salt and pepper shakers, wanted too see if surrealism works in childrens books style. yay or nay?

[Jake Parker]

@Ryan-Sutherland I say yay, though it's hard to find on the book shelf. A few of my favorite books are very surreal. The Rules of Summer is an AMAZING book by Shaun Tan, in fact all of his books have a nice relateble surrealism to them. Also The Adventures of Abdi is just beautiful.

I think @Will-Terry is right about the three story images. But just to round out your portfolio you should do something on the safe side too. Like your take on one of the classic fairy tales.

[Ryan Sutherland]

@Jake-Parker i love Shaun Tan, not just coz he's an aussie, he was my influence back at the start of high school to get into illustrating picture books, and i unfortunately put it off until now. he's actually coming to my local gallery in october. cant wait.
and yeah i hear ya man, i love drawing old fairy tales and the like, iv done a couple of pied pippers. like this guy.

[Ryan Sutherland]

@Ryan-Sutherland ok one more..

[Lee White]

Nice Ryan, Thanks for posting these!

That's a really sweet piece at the top and I see you are exploring some different styles with the others. All very good stuff!

[Ryan Sutherland]

@Lee-White thanks man. yeah i jump around a bit on the old style wagon. depends on what its for really. i will stick to one at some stage. would make dealing with clients a lot easier, rather than asking them what style they like.

[Lee White]

Note: I can't get the image to show up for some reason, but there is the link at the bottom. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong there?? : )

Here's some color notes if you are interested. I saw you had a cooler foreground so I spread that around your shadow area. I eliminated a lot of contrast in the shadow tones and simplified the shapes in the shadow. Then I added a warmer light to the scene and put some fairly saturated orange around the characters cast shadow to draw some attention there. Also, I added a warm hue to the transition area between the lights and darks. That's a place you can add color to to make a scene illuminate a bit more. I do the same thing when figure painting. Just saturate that area between shadow and light and it makes it pop so much more.

I just did it quick, so the marks are rough, but maybe it is something that you can use. : )

![] (https://www.flickr.com/photos/134396465@N04/18719517933/in/datetaken/lightbox/)

[Ryan Sutherland]

@Lee-White thanks man, but i cant see what you did, and the link just takes me to yahoo. try not putting a gap between these [] and this ( at the start.

[Lee White]

Love the image upload button! : )

Here's the quick rework...

[Ryan Sutherland]

@Lee-White awesome man, cheers, you are right, what ya did to those shadows really does draw the eye there. i really need to do a lot more classes, iv managed well enough for a few years avoiding learning the technical stuff but now that im trying to take my art somewhere im definitely seeing the areas i lack. especially having cool gents like ya self willing to point it out.
with this new subscription option, thats going to be so much easier.

[Leontine]

@Ryan-Sutherland Really (M)ice!