Hey everyone! This is my first time to participate in these challenges. I was trying an approach that Jake Parker talked about in one of his emails not long ago as a way to show a sequence of actions as characters move through a single environment or scene. Hope it makes sense. Let me know what you think.
Have a great day!
Eric Droke

Here's my post for the July contest. It was a challenge working with such an iconic piece of literature. It was tough trying to avoid the original aesthetic, not to mention the movie's influence. I'm still very new to this, so definitely a good challenge for me.

These are the gifts (in the book) given by the Wizard: a silk heart filled with sawdust for the Tin Man, a scoop of bran filled with pins and needles ("bran new brains") for the Scarecrow, and a bottle of "courage" potion for the Lion. (Also, Dorothy's shoes are silver in the book.) All these things were just substitutes for the real gifts acquired along the journey on the yellow brick road... love, wisdom, courage, and a way home. Hope you enjoy!

Here are a couple of things I’ve been working on this month...

I decided to go sci-fi dramatic this time. Hope you all like it.

It looks like you’ve got multiple “horizons” in your image. Ideally, you should only have one horizon line in a one or two point perspective image. All parallel lines (edges of the bed, rug, table, etc) should converge to points on that single horizon line. So, I think a good exercise would be to choose one horizon and redraw your shapes so that all of the parallels converge somewhere on that line.

Here’s a character lineup I’ve been working on from the new Character Design class. What do you think?

From left to right: Cogsworth, Belle, Beast, Mrs. Potts, dog

@cathy-spee I did all my thumbnailing and sketching on paper with color pencils. Then I snapped a pic of my final sketch, pulled into Procreate and drew over it. I added some adjustment layers to play with the colors and textures, too.

@aprilshin , not sure it will help, but one thing you can think about is how your characters are spaced across the page. There's kind of a predictable regularity right now, which may be exactly what you want. You may want to consider making the characters group a little more randomly. Maybe push the whole crowd to the left a little to give them somewhere to go on the page. I don't know... just something to think about. Super cute illustration, though! Love it.

@Molambo, I liked the other way better. I think the dark reads more naturally... at least for me. Maybe there's a middle ground that would be perfect. But for me, I'm leaning toward the image with the darker dragon in the foreground.

@Jesse-Rivera Great job! I see no problems with this at all. No need to apologize for dirty rulers, brother. These exercises are meant to be gritty, greasy, hard work. So, don't worry about if it's pretty or not... for now. As for uploading images from your phone, I would stick to the smallest size available unless it's a finished piece of art. No need for a full resolution image when 72 dpi will do. Hey, keep up the good work!

@Molambo, I liked the other way better. I think the dark reads more naturally... at least for me. Maybe there's a middle ground that would be perfect. But for me, I'm leaning toward the image with the darker dragon in the foreground.

@deboraht , i think I might like the second one best. I really like it. I could totally see this in a "Ranger Rick" or some other educational magazine like that. Trust your instincts and do what YOU like best. I think it works either way. Good job!

@Lee-White, that is a beautiful image! Thanks for sharing.

@cszoltan I love that giant frog... or toad. Great job!

I decided to go sci-fi dramatic this time. Hope you all like it.

@kylebeaudette, I like your dragonfly fella. He looks kinda like a nice dad dragonfly. I can appreciate that.

As for the separate logins, yes, i have two logins as well. I think the idea is that the forum and classes are two separate sites. You don't necessarily have to be a member of the classes to join the forum and talk about things. At least that's the way I understand it.

@Gabby-Correia , GREAT job!!!

@aprilshin Thanks a ton!

@Gabby-Correia, I totally see that now. I like the idea of the huge shadow, but I'm not sure why I totally missed the shadow in the color version. I saw it in the BW version. I think one thing that helps is how the shadow only falls on part of the one boy's face in the BW version. Makes the shadow more "readable". Rather than changing the lighting in the whole pic, maybe just light up part of that boy's face in the color version... as if the shadow is only falling on part of him. See what that does. I think that will really look good. Could possibly be a simple solution so that you keep all that interesting color work.

Here are a couple of things I’ve been working on this month...