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've been exploring two related options for the January contest, I'm curious of people have a preference for one over the other? I'd also appreciate any other feedback! I'm going for something minimalist but maybe they need to be pushed farther?
Option 1:

Option 2:

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?

@burvantill I just started going through the class, but I'll post what I do as I work on it. Here are my building silhouettes, this definitely didn't come naturally to me and some of them are still a bit unclear.

@demotlj thanks!

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

Love it! The cross-hatching gives it a great atmosphere.

@Lovsey the fairy making an ‘ink angel’ is what I was going for! Glad it came across. Good advice on placing Ellie farther away, thanks

I just showed that one to my sister and she said one of the faeries looks dead. To be clear, they’re meant to be playing in the ink...if I decide to go with this concept I can clean up the gestures etc

@gavpartridge I think that’s a valid criticism. I guess I’ve been having a hard time coming up with a good story. Does this feel any better? It might be a bit silly, but maybe there’s just enough story to be fun?

I’ve been playing around with my composition, I’m wondering if any of these thumbnails feels like an improvement on my earlier ones?

@Coley glad I could help!

@Coley You definitely want to save it out as a png file to get the best quality, jpeg is always compressed to some extent (which reduces file size but can look less sharp or introduce visual artifacts). The other thing to consider is the color profile, I think there's a recent thread about that for Procreate.

@Melanie-Ortins thanks! I like fairy 1 also because the drips feel particularly “inky” to me, if that makes sense. It seems like mostly people respond more to the composition of thumbnail 1, but I’m wondering if it’s lacking from a story-telling point of view? Not that other one has much of a story either. Idk sometimes l like to keep things simple, but I also want it to be interesting