My robot is having an existential crisis.

Tried something a little different this month. It's a combination of traditional watercolor and digital. Update: changed the lighting to more of a night scene.

I was inspired by the virtual Thanksgiving my family had this year.

This is a great thread! I just wanted to add two additional "tricks of the trade", which a friend taught me and I used for this contest:

1. Add a top level layer set to the saturation blend mode, and fill with pure white (or any unsaturated color) so you can see what your image looks like in black and white. I find toggling this layer off and on as I'm adding colors helps me control the values better and see if I'm getting off track.
2. Another trick my friend taught me is to take a painting/illustration (by yourself or another artist) where you like the value distribution, and make small black and white copy you can refer to as you work (I put it on my phone). This can also keep you grounded as to the balance of values, e.g. it can help you notice if your illustration is getting to dark overall or doesn't have enough contrast.

The Heart and The Bottle by Jeffers isn't all about loneliness per se, but I find this spread to be beautifully evocative of what it feels like to miss one person in particular

I’ve been playing with idea of drawing the ink fairy based on an ink splatter pattern. Here are a few attempts, I wonder if one stands out to people?
I’ve also been exploring a couple of thumbnails, any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I like where it’s going so far! Question about the tracks: they look close enough to something normal that I’m not sure if I’m supposed to know what they are or not? Maybe you could push their weirdness factor?

@powsupermum I like them both!

@demotlj Nice! You definitely get much better contrast in the second version, and I think the additional line work adds a lot of visual interest. Have you tried scanning the watercolor instead of photographing it? Sometimes I feel like using a scanner removes too much texture, but maybe I'm just not doing it right (or using a nice enough scanner...)

@demotlj This is really fun! Out of curiosity, how did you go from the first to the second version? Digital adjustments or did you do additional painting?

I was inspired by the virtual Thanksgiving my family had this year.

I wondering if anyone has an opinion about the size of the grid?

@ruth thanks!

Hi All,
My take on the November contest is about being together virtually. I'd love feedback on which of the animals are working well and which aren't, if anyone has better ideas for other animals it would be fun to include, or any other feedback. Thanks!

@demotlj thanks!

@demotlj Can I ask what brushes you used in procreate?