@Lee-White Great effort! Somehow the textures on the leg make him look like he's wearing pinstriped trousers... which makes it more appealing to me! I love the grittiness and the style. I'm not someone who is into purchasing fan art, but if it were more in this vein, I might consider it!

I just finished these portraits for the SCBWI Orlando conference (SHHh - the participants won't see them until this Friday!)

@BichonBistro For deliverables, give the client a VECTOR version so they can scale up or down should they decide to use the logo on shirts, cards, promotional signs, etc. You can use Affinity Designer, Illustrator, or Inkscape to do it, and your edges will look sharp as ever. Typically when I did logo work, I provided vector files (.svg or .eps) as the base, and then exported from there as .png, .jpg in various scales so the client could use them for web purposes right off the bat.

Check the logo at 2" square, 4" square and 12" square to be sure it reads as a balanced illustration. Right now the center elements are very heavy compared to the bichon fur. Consider ways to balance this visual imbalance.

Best of luck.

So how did it go? Did you end up going to Bologna?
I had a few friends attend and say they were so impressed by the work they saw.

Working on finishing color for a to-be indie-published book... had to share with someone! (SHHHhh for now)

What a hilarious concept! To improve the final, I'd work on contrast, adding depth and clarity...
Cows in the back need to be clearly beamed up - so maybe higher contrast with the background by darkening the very, very back, cleaning up the 'beam' edges, and emphasizing the beam light on top of the critters vs. shadow underneath (leaving no doubt they're about to get beamed up!). Consider also moving the three beamed cows slightly to the right so the overlapping hoof-in-beam cow (the AAGGHHH one) doesn't overlap with that beam. Your foreground character, the rooster, is providing a great visual greeting to the viewer, but his feather tone/value is the same-same as the rest of the illustration. You can test whether going with more intense color or adding more detail will help bring him forward. Love your palette, and that pop of blue headphones really pops out - consider a more teal (or a blue with more + yellow color) if you're wanting everything to be in harmony with the palette you've chosen... or keep as is, if it's on purpose.

Oh, and the soft edges don't bother me because it appears to be a stylistic choice and is quite consistent throughout.

Sometimes it just takes too much time and energy to explain specifically to a new illustrator why their drawing doesn't work or why it looks unfinished. 1:1 critique takes a lot of critical thinking from the part of the reviewer and then needs to be filtered through appropriate commentary filters so no one ends up despairing. It's also hard to know where someone is in their career based off single posts here and there.

Anyway, I feel like I'd be repeating nice-isms like...

• Keep drawing!
• Just keep on working and your style will emerge.
• "Talent" takes time and a lot of practice. It doesn't happen overnight.
• You'll develop a discerning eye, skills, and eventually you'll be able to match your artwork with your vision.

Well, now that I've written it here, I guess I can just copy and paste for future critique seekers.

Oh, and I love the safe word "CRIT WANTED"

Heartbreaking. I just learned of Will's wife passing away, and wanted to offer my condolences. May he and his boys find some solace in this time of grief.

@MichaelaH heheh, I was in the now closed Erfolgreich Illustrator facebook group. Sadly, yes, I noticed Johanna was doing more and more about business in general, but I thought hopefully that she had maintained the older podcasts and information from the past.

It's too bad @Dima-Eichhorn cannot join the Erfolgreich Illustrator group. Maybe she can see the information through the link you posted?

I'm jealous! I miss Natasa! She and I are in an artists collective where we exhibited together at Surtex. She's super nice. Her agent is German and is the previous agent of Miriam Bos I believe. Although this year I took a break from the tradeshows, we're thinking of doing Bologna next year and perhaps one of the surface pattern tradeshows... we shall see!