I learned a lesson on this one: Don't spend a week drawing fox studies for foxes that you're going to eliminate. Composition (story) comes first!

Thanks for doing these prompts and contests, guys! They really are testing my ideas and skills, and slowly, I'm building a process that has some consistency, even though the "medium" varies.

And I really hand it to all my fellow artists who came up with such creative takes on this prompt!

I just changed out my entry for a version with my name on it. I hope that's ok. It's exactly the same artwork but I keep forgetting to include my name!

Sometimes on those long car trips there was a bit too much togetherness. We did finally forgive one other, though .

Some types like to be alone. Others, not so much...

Autumn reflection

Here we go!

Just trying to produce more finished work so I can evaluate it and have it evaluated online. This is a waiter I saw in a (coffee) bar in a tiny mountain hamlet near Aosta, Italy. He looked fierce and eccentric and I thought he might make a good character. I am always torn, though, between whether to exaggerate for comic effect or whether to keep things relatively realistic.

I didn't have much time to be on the forums while I was taking the Backgrounds course, but now I'll try to start posting and commenting again ️.

The sole purpose of this piece was to see if I could finish something in a day, and to have fun. Yesterday I did have fun, and I thought I had finished it. But then it became evident that the legs were flipping (that is, you couldn't tell which one was in front and which in back). So today I spent most of the day redrawing it over and over until it worked, which was less fun. But I finished!

I'm very tempted to add a popsicle to that hand sticking out, but not today. Happy June!

Doing some before and after posts on Instagram after reworking old pieces. I'm going to post this one later today, though I may rework the shadow first. The original piece is rectangular and so I extended it:

Because it rains every day in November where I live, and even a little patch of color brings hope.

Thanks for inventing Slowvember, Lee!

I spent the last week doing a brick and mortar workshop at which we assembled a lot of traditional elements into a digital collage. Our assigned story was The Musicians of Bremen, and we had to choose an environment, so I choose the rural US in the early 20th century, probably because I had to choose quickly and it was so far away from where I really was.

I spent most of the week developing sketches of the characters, and I did a super quick storyboard, during which I was amused to realize that the donkey thought he was going to play the lute and told the dog to play the kettle drums, but it will never work because the donkey only has hooves! In my story, the donkey became a she, and the instruments changed as well, but during the process I got an image in my mind of when things are settled, they finally get to play, and the donkey is found out.

This JPEG loaded really green for some reason. It doesn't look that green on either my Cintiq nor on my computer monitor, so I don't know what to do about it! But the original has much more muted, almost taupe-ish greens throughout, including the donkey's skin and the drum.

I'm supposed to go see relatives the end of the week, but I really wanted to get this piece to a decent point first. I'm tired of not finishing things! I'll probably get to my relatives' house and realize I didn't pack any shoes or something...

I debated putting this in the Inktober thread, but I don't know if it counts. It's not according to a prompt. I changed back to more of a pencil outline with ink washes. It's even looser or more cartoony than my character entry for the contest. But this was how my character came to mind, so I wanted to draw the scene. How does it read to you guys? Can you tell what's happening? What's the mood? I'm wanting a fresh take on how well it works. I was thinking about using it for a postcard. Thanks!

P.S. The text reads, "That's enough, pigeons!"

@Koaila-art If you submit twice before the deadline, they do use the second version. I found this out late Thursday night when I submitted, noticed a mistake, fixed it and resubmitted. Then I wasn't sure I had chosen the version that was pasted onto the template with my name and socials, and submitted a third time, all within 30 minutes! I was terribly embarrassed and apologized.

Austin replied the next day and said he sees our entries in submission order and always uses the latest one, but that if I wanted I could email resubmissions from now on so I didn't have to fill out the whole form every time. So apparently this is a regular enough occurrence that he had a ready answer for it!

Moral of story: None of us is at our best late at night before a deadline and...the SVS staff are the best!!!

P.S. Oh, maybe you mean you still haven't submitted the correction? Yeah, just write Austin an email. I love your piece!

@Melissa-Bailey-0 And by the time I saw this, that's the one I had chosen! I was originally going to get up this morning and post one, but in the end, as it was 1 a.m, I just wanted to submit one and sleep well. Thank you for following me on this piece, Melissa, Laurie and Nyrryl!

Here we go!

So, here's two versions of the finished piece. Favorite? I'm getting up early tomorrow my time to post one or the other.

@Melissa-Bailey-0 I just didn't know that the rules of book character placement applied to a character sheet, as there isn't a facing page! I guess I was thinking of it as both pages, or at least a self-contained composition.

That's a really good exposition of character placement, though, and I like all your examples. I'm glad I asked for it! As I recall, Jakes Little Bot and Sparrow also goes back on the page at one point, as Little Bot is recalling his memories.

@Melissa-Bailey-0 In fact, I did look at the little dancer! At first I only had the idea of the girl sniffing and lifting herself up and drew her as such, but because I spent so many years in the Metropolitan Museum, at some point it came to me that I was going for something similar, and I looked at some photos of the dancer from various angles. I also tried to photograph my own hands. Not very doable from the back!

Thanks for the hints about proportions. I tried to straighten out her limbs, but it was hard to do entirely. I should come up with another way.

I'm not entirely sure which poses I will go with in the end, also because I have heard varying opinions, but since there are only two more days, I will start working on the finish by tomorrow.

I am a big fan of your Albert, by the way! (And Mag's!) I notice that you did have him turned towards the right even though he's on the right side of the page. I always thought things on the right should turn inwards. I may keep Serena turned in, but I would be interested in hearing your reasoning!

I revised some of the figures this morning.

1. Better bagel silhouette
2. Thought the hands in 2A, although graceful, might not be anatomically likely, so experimented with alternatives 2B and 2C.
3. Without the text with the mom's voice offstage, there's no reason for her to be looking up (3A), so I came up with 3B in which she is clearly reading to her doll. Is it clearer now that it's a doll? If not, I'll clarify the accompanying text.
4. I still wasn't quite sure about the angry expression in the fencing pose, so I came up with various smiles that range from determined and slightly mean to just delighted. Do any of these help tell the story better?

Thanks for any feedback!

So it does! Cool!

These are adorable! I really like the cut paper look and the simplicity of them. The only thing I'd say is that the purple monster has a less paper texture than the bus or other pieces. But keep creating pieces like this and you'll do really well!