Homeage to my Dad. Thanks to him, I have climbed up more mountains in my life than I'd be able to remember to count, and got lost miles from the correct turn in the trail many more times still. Back in the early 2000s when GPS systems weren't as advanced and convenient as they are now, and the loss of signal and misread of the map would lead to the occasional hickup.
So many amazing entries this month!
I finished this a week or so ago, so I thought I best post before I forget.
I too haven't had much time to take slowvember really slow this month, but I am still happy to say I spend a fair bit more time developing and working this one out. I needed bookcover examples for my portfolio, and this is gonna be one of them!
Hope you like it. Lots of great work this month!
Here's mine! Struggled to come up with a concept for this one, and didn't have a lot of time in the end, but here we are! I'm still pleased with the image at least from a render standpoint I guess.
It took me forever to finally compose an image i was somewhat happy with for this month! Phew! But it's done and I'm happy I could hand in something.
I'm doing mine in bulks because I often don't have time for several days in a row! I'm also not following the prompts but inking cute halloween animals every day. My goal here is to create cute animal examples for my portfolio and mostly to just manage to finish 31 drawings consistently! So I hoped to pick an achievable theme.
These are my first batch!
Besides a few fantasy commissions, I am slowly struggling my way through this illustration this month:
Hey guys!
Everyone's pieces are looking really promising, I look forward to seeing them all.
It's pretty late for me to ask for feedback as this is pretty much finished, but I still wanted to post it to get a general opinion whilst there's still some time to rework minor or even major bits or even rethink the concept.
Here's what I came up with!
I'd love to hear what you think 
Thanks!
I like the site a lot! Really nice work, your individual projects are beautiful, I really like the spirits and brink paintings.
My only feedback would be that maybe the illustration section doesn't show a lot of work at first glance, and the fewer clicks it takes to find what you're all about, the better. Because as a newcomer to the site I don't know what to expect from the sections you've named, I'm not sure as an art director I'd immediately know what to click or how its relevant to me.
This might be unnecessary for what you're going for, but maybe you could have a clearer section for projects, and find a more targeted heading for bits and pieces? Editorial, maybe? Or just display your absolute best under Illustration in a more open gallery? Just some ideas. You got cool artwork, I only want to see more of it straight away, I think!
And yeah don't worry about the similar design! I can't count how many portfolios I've seen with the artist name written in fancy writing at the top and the images right beneath. (strangely enough that's because it makes a lot of sense for a portfolio and is a very common and successful theme 
)
@NessIllustration Thanks, that's really insightful! I don't have a lot of ground for comparison as of yet for what the industry generally offers in Europe. It's going to be a roughly 10 Euro book, so nothing too high-value in stores, and I am unsure of where the compensation stands based on that I don't think I'm receiving an advance, as I am entitled to royalties from the first book sold. (No advance to pay back, which in theory offsets the smaller lump sum a fair bit probably if it does well.) But that's a shot in the dark!
@davidhohn thanks so much to you too, that is an interesting consideration. For sure I'm not going to assume a second contract as 'granted'. Negotiation is a super scary idea because of that! 
Checking the contract now I believe I only signed over the copyright "of use"[...]. It doesn't list anything relating to the style or characters themselves, which makes me optimistic that I retain the copyright.
I also just noticed a clause stating "The rights to exploit the illustrations independently of the work published by the Publisher [...] is reserved to the Illustrator."
Not super related to my initial question but I'm curious what 'rights to exploit' normally refers to. Showing my green ears here, having not noticed and cleared this up with the publisher before. 
Hey guys! (long time no post.)
I've not been very active on here because in 2020, I've been working on a whole bunch of paid projects. Mostly self published authors, but I also landed my first gig with a major German publisher. (might make another post to brag a bit, who knows.)
It was a young-reader's book, so cover design + vignettes, and the project went so well that they requested me back just a month or so later for a three book series starting this year.
It's a really exciting project from a narrative and also from a novelty standpoint, so I am thrilled to be involved with it. I've signed the contract for the first book in the series, and of course that means I can only guess at the future.
So this has made me wonder though whether I have room for contract negotiations in this kind of scenario. For the first book, I was offered 4000 Euro and 2% royalties, starting from the first book sold. In exchange, I am doing 1 cover illustration, 20 full-page, full-bleed illustrations and a further 20-odd vignettes. It's my biggest project to date!
If all goes to plan and the second book goes forward, I think they'd likely make me a similar offer for the following volumes. So I guess I'm curious: Does that sound like the expected amount of money for a fairly new illustrator and a young-reader's book? And if there are three separate contracts, how acceptable is it in general to try and renegotiate from one book to the next? (Since of course the publisher is likely counting on keeping the same illustrator for a whole series.)
The publisher has been amazing to work with! Any experiences or opinions anyone can share?
Thanks!
I really like that refined sketch.
As Ness mentioned there's some good fundamentals here and really cool concepts.
It would be nice to see some coloured illustrations because I think especially for children's books, images will probably be in colour and rendered out, and from the examples above I'm not sure what that would look like for you!
I think it's worth starting to put together a website if you haven't already and spend time on some best-as-you-can illustration pieces. Maybe some full spreads in colour. I don't know if that's what you want to do or if you're purposely focusing on vignettes for chapter books.
Hey guys, I have a couple of questions to add to this if anyone has any insights.
What do you guys think qualifies as relevant education in this case? For example, I didn't study illustration but Digital Arts - still worth mentioning or is education really not that relevant unless it fits very specifically?
Do you guys send loose jpegs as attachments to show your work, as some agencies request, or do you have a PDF portfolio for these occasions? How do you name your Jpegs attachments? It's probably overthinking, but I feel silly or lazy no matter what I name them.
I'm also wondering how much one should try to refer to the specific agency. For normal job applications, I'd find it easier to research the company a little, but I find most illustration agencies have versatile and impressive rosters and have done plenty of awesome work.
To contribute, my current formula is this:
Feels a little subpar perhaps but I couldn't help but feel like anything else might just not be interesting at this stage Maybe I'll add in that I'm German and bi-lingual or something.
Leaning towards A as well, although I think either could work if the values were pushed a bit more and colour played alongside with the contrast
love the idea and composition, and especially the character design! Nice work!
@TessaW Hey tessa! Thanks, that's some great advise. I had been wondering about text and I think you're right, I might go through and remove that.
Thanks for remembering my bear piece XD I wasn't sure if it was all that strong, but with the current layout I have a space free again so I might reinclude it with some alterations...
Pencil textures are featuring more and more in my work so i hope with time my portfolio will become more textured and book-friendly
You might be right about B&W! I alwyas think of colour as my strength, but you're right that my subject matter probably works better for middle grade.
wooh! Good luck with your applications, your work has really stood out to everyone for a while now so it's only a question of time until you make a total breakthrough That's a really cool way of thinking of applying to agents. I'm not sure my inner-imposter could be shut up like that, but it's really good to remember how true that is. They are making money off their artists too after all.
