Hi! Here is my entry for this month.

The back story- Mushroom Village was home to many little insects. Whenever a new flower bud was about to bloom, it would glow with light of life. In that light, one of the insect would play music, to welcome the birth new flower. The rest of the inhabitants would listen the music and enjoy all night long.

Hi all! I am Sweta Roy Choudhury from India. I have joined SVS learn in January and have done some basic courses. Right now I am watching Composition class.

I have never participated in any SVS contest, though I read the posts. So I am a little bit nervous. I have tried a lot of ideas as rough sketches but none seems to focus on 'village'. It's more focused on one or two character doing something. I tinkered a lot this whole time to come up with something that focuses more on the village, but I couldn't. Since submission day is near, I am posting whatever I came up with.

All the insects living in the mushroom village are listening intently to the music, being played by mantis. The mantis is playing an instrument similar to violin (This is an instrument generally seen in India, being played by folk singers).

Please share your views & feedback. I hope I can finish it within time.

Even if I can't this assignment gave me a lot to learn.

Hi @burvantill, I love your concept. For the props in kids hands you can think of something that is not musical instrument, but which can create music. This will add more interest I feel.
As for the little rabbit and the two mice, you can keep them in front and vary the size of animals in between the parade. That might balance out the composition. Something sort of big to small animals.

@eunji-jung hey so happy to see you here. I am following you for sometime over instagram. I love your work.

This is a very rough value study. I thought of making that flowerbud as light source. Is it making the focus too bright? Should I rather put little lights hanging from the big mushroom... I am in a fix.

Here is the rough color blocking.

I would like to get feedback on this one.

Hi @burvantill, I love your concept. For the props in kids hands you can think of something that is not musical instrument, but which can create music. This will add more interest I feel.
As for the little rabbit and the two mice, you can keep them in front and vary the size of animals in between the parade. That might balance out the composition. Something sort of big to small animals.

@Simon-Prime if you want to have some fun ideas to try, you can go for this website by Amy Pikaland. Every time I am out of ideas, I go there and try out the prompts.

Hi, few years back I came across this website called Storybird, where illustrators submitted their illustrations, and people visiting the website can use those to create their stories. After that, Storyweaver came up, it is more or less an Indian version of Storybird.

At the time of its creation Storyweaver conducted a contest named #6 frame story challenge. They gave some words from which the participant has to come up with a story, and illustrate that story in just 6 frames. The participant had to submit the psd files. They mentioned that the works were taken under creative commons license and anywhere the illustration will be used, proper credit would be given. I participated in it.

Afterwards, I was sceptical, I felt that it was just creating a huge library of images without paying anything to the creator. So I didn't participate in any other challenge they conducted.

But now, I am coming across many new illustrators who got break from these platforms. So I would like to know if anyone here has any idea about these platforms. Is it alright to upload works here, hoping to get break in publishing?

I also had same problem about style and what's more I love experimenting with styles. My styles range from flat color simple shapes to painterly looking. I also like incorporating Indian folk art styles too at times. I used to worry a lot about this until I came across this article by Kyle T Webster link text. I also subscribed to free email course 'Discovering your Personal Style' by Amy Pikaland.

@lei Thanks for the feedback. You are right. Now that you pointed out I notice it.Those three bugs should have less focus. I will work on it. I have submitted this illustration for the challenge for now. But I will make the edits and see how it works before adding to my portfolio.

@bnewman Thank you

@carriecopa I love the warm color scheme more.

Hi! Here is my entry for this month.

The back story- Mushroom Village was home to many little insects. Whenever a new flower bud was about to bloom, it would glow with light of life. In that light, one of the insect would play music, to welcome the birth new flower. The rest of the inhabitants would listen the music and enjoy all night long.

I would like to get feedback on this one.

@eunji-jung hey so happy to see you here. I am following you for sometime over instagram. I love your work.