1 Mar 2019, 01:30

I like how dynamic your character designs look and the finished pieces are great, too. I hope you don't mind that I did a composition draw-over, just to show you what I'm thinking.

All my suggestions are in blue. The first thing that caught my eye was the gutter and how your main character was on the edge of being to close leaning into it, and how the delicate end of his stick and the corner of the paper boat are also a bit too close. The way I've drawn the blue lines on either side of the gutter shows the danger zone that I like to avoid placing important objects within. So, I've shifted your main character and his lily pad to the left, and the boat and lily pad in front of it to the right. The effect also also emphasizes how he's reaching. I've also shifted the book to the right because it got too close to the edge after my change.

The line under the frog's lily pad felt distracting. It looks too similar to his stick and none of the other lily pads have them, even though I know there would be a stem/root for each lily pad. I just took it out. When you go to color, the water might be too dark/murky to see the roots anyway.

The lily pad in the middle of the spread is very small and could easily get swallowed up by the gutter. So I just made it bigger and shifted it a bit to the right.

Two of the flowers you drew are working in that they point to the main objects. I added a third closer to the frog.

Lastly, I made the boat a bit bigger so it overlaps the lily pad behind it, just to add some depth.

Hope some of this is helpful. I've learned from draw-overs from other artists in this forum to my own work and found that it's an effective way to get my notes across. Looking forward to seeing your illustration develop.

composition drawover.jpg