@evilrobot Look at dat HAWG! Awesome Style Are you using a brush pen?

@MikeCañas eyecatching! great work!

@Coley Gestures are always a great idea. Good to know I'm not the only one who hasn't seen this vid

@Heather-Boyd Thank you! I will definitely share when I finally finish something! Please feel free to jump in and critique anything you see from me

@chrisaakins wow great job man!

I'm close to brand spankin new SVS member and I'm halfway through the Illustrating Children's Books 1. So good!! The amount of insider knowledge that Sheila Keenan drops is a goldmine. And watching Jake lay out drawing after drawing in book format is incredible. It's all just so good and why I decided to become a member in the first place!

Middle prompt will be a hit!

@jdubz Sorry I haven't seen your reply until now. I need to make it a habit to check these forums.

Great Work!! All around huge improvement on an already great start. I love your second drawing too with him in a jar. Definitely looks like you're having fun with this one

Great concept and composition! I'm just going to lay in every microthought and nit-picky thing I can squeeze out of here just to do it!

One thing I noticed is that all of the "shock" seems to be on the left side of the room. Perhaps you could make those eye silhouettes on the right pop with the same intensity as the teacher.

I love the teacher's long mouth and how it shows such an exaggerated reaction. I think that feature works well for her/him and is worth preserving in the finished piece. Maybe bottom weight it with some teeth?

You get a good sense that Susie's a girl with her hairstyle and funky dress. Does that make the teacher naked? Maybe just add a tie?

Susie's stance is nice and proud. It reads really well me thinks! However, I feel like it could be more obvious that she "brought" the astronaut to school. I think it'd be nice to see some gesture from Susie acknowledging the astronauts presence.

Just noticed the detail that the blackboard is round. That's a fun choice! To be consistent maybe change the shelving next to Susie and the Wallclock/art above it could be round too. Oh and I guess to riff off that - Why not make all the aliens be curvey and rounded with the astronaut having more of an angular presence? Kind of would make him look more out of place - Just a thought!

Is that a piece of chalk that the teacher dropped when seeing the astronaut? It might be fun to have the chalk still in his/her tentacle just finishing up the T in EXIST

Here's something, Suzie looks a little too close to the wall which flattens her out a little. Maybe you could pull her forward or push the wall back a little to give room for her dimension.

You have the opportunity for a lot of colors in this piece which could get overwhelming when working toward completion. Before moving into rendering detail, I think it'll be extra important to test out some color thumbnails first to save yourself some headache later on.

Make sure to add some depth into whatever room or hallway that doorway leads to.

Oo heres one that I almost forgot to mention (are you still reading? lol). One of Susie's pigtail antenna things is riding the astronaut's armpit too closely. Tangents like that can be distracting if they make it into the final illustration.

Here's a thought - The astronaut doesn't really have to be full "adult" size as we consider adults here on earth. These aliens good be HUGE and the astronaut could be kitten sized in her hand, or even a jar! PS astronauts suit is looking great!

So that's my 22 cents.. Just want you to have an outsider's perspective!