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.

Here is my submissiiiooon!

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!

These are absolutely stunning! Well done, and congrats on the funded project. beautiful vector patterns like that would scare me so much, it's all come together fantastically.

Welcome! The character is super adorable and well rendered. I'd also say that perhaps the neck is a bit too stiff. I understand why you'd draw a pigeon that way, but there is so much haste and action in the image that I think I'd want the whole body to follow suit. Maybe the neck could have bent forward or backwards a bit, or he could have looked quite closely and with shock at the watch.

I think from a storytelling perspective having him **realize ** the time and be shocked might be more engaging than just after he realizes it, when he is speeding up. (this you've communicated really well, but there could just be even more emotion!)

@Jeremy-Ross I am! Just not had a lot of responses. I had a few "We like your work and we'll keep you in mind if a suitable project arises" kind of replies, and I am currently working with one of Germany's biggest publishers on a series (super exciting!) It may very well be that I'm just not sending enough emails in quantity, and I fear postcards aren't working atm.

But whilst there's a big lull between such opportunities self-published work lets me make some savings and practice my hand at working on whole projects at least. ^_^' I figured there's enough benefits to keep that up.

Thanks so much for the compliment!

Thanks for all your great answers, those are all very good points. I'm glad for the confirmation that I'm at least not "unreasonable" for not naturally including book design. Type makes me a little nervous! But I am also curious about giving it a shot sometime with a budget-minded client and seeing if I could add to my skillset with this.

For now my process is normally transparency of saying "I could help but I'm no pro at this", and hoping that I don't lose the projects! XD

I totally agree that I've seen some of my first published clients make choices with the book design that I wouldn't have agreed with - but ultimately Rachel is probably right and the illustrations will ultimately shine

Hey guys!

So over the past year I've had a fairly steady stream of requests from self publishing authors, and although that's not ultimately my goal it's definitely been able to pay the bills very nicely for me with something I love. Some of the results have been great portfolio pieces for me and it's all been pretty fun to do!

But as I get more of these requests and I'm navigating how much I can charge (I am trying to get at least £2000 for a 32 page book, but this is already too much for many independent clients). One issue I keep deliberating with these clients is that I am never certain if they understand that my illustration services don't include designing the book layout and text. If I say I won't handle the book design, this means another cost for them and turns away some of these clients.

I've been doing this in a bit of a vacuum and now I'm curious what you guys might do when you work with self published authors (if you do): Is Book design a skill we should offer as well? Is it maybe not even that big a deal to learn and include in the price? Or is it very fair to say that that's not our responsibility and the client will need to handle this or outsource this themselves?

Hey!

Only things I noticed is that my browser can't load your logo, potentially.

...Both at the top and bottom of the page!

I also wonder if it's worth including a call to action with your email on the main illustration page, or separate out a clear contact page..I can see why you didn't, because ultimately it would be very brief with the information just repeated, but I believe it's good form to have a very clear link to contact information on first glance.

Hey! The overall colours, composition and character expressions are really cool, so I think it's a solid piece!

A few areas for potential improvement for me could include:

• Maybe take a look at the tangents on the characters - the girl's right hand blends into the boy's hat and it took me a moment to really see it. Her neck also seems quite long, since we're looking down at them slightly. Anatomically, she seems a little less appealing than the other two.

The hair of the boy at the front also curves quite directly into the dress, although not as noticeably - that's another tangent to maybe clear up a little bit so the character don't blend together.

• I wonder if the composition could benefit from a bit more breathing room, giving the painting a bit more of a feel of freedom and flying. The dragon feels very squished into the image in the lower right corner. If the dragon was a bit smaller you could have more clouds for "movement room", but you could even let the landscape beneath shine through the clouds to add more story. Just an idea!

• The face of the dragon looks a little bit off.. I think it might be because the eyes and forehead make it look like we're looking down onto the dragon's head, but the snout on its own look like a profile-shot. As a result the mouth-eye connection looks a little odd. If I cover his right eye with my finger, I already feel better about the dragon's face!

Hope some of this helps!

It's on the way to being a really lovely image!

That's really cool, I love this new version. Really amazing how the title is incorporated!

Adding to the feedback above, I'm personally a bit unsure about the scale in this image! It's cool to have this massive cat and fish, but in comparison to all this, the tree looks really small compared to the girl as well.

I'm not sure if the intention was to have it look like the tree is in the distance (hence small compared to the girl) , but if so, It's not reading very clearly to me. Part of that is that it looks like we're looking down on the cat slightly, as if the tree was below our eye level, when the girl is roughly AT our eye level, if that makes sense.

Love the textures and the rendering on the branches and bark!

I really love how you did the author credit on this one, that feels like amazing typography work that's really nicely built into the image!

But I'm not sure about the vertical title.

I find those pretty hard to read at a quick glance, which might already be enough to turn some people away. The cover looks super cool, but I think that's a risk, and I'm not sure it's worth taking.

Or if you are into it, I'd say the "The" is currently drawing all my attention text wise because my brain can interpret it immediately, and then it doesn't smoothly connect to the rest of the title (And I already know what the title is from previous versions!)