Congratulations! That's amazing news.

Wow, congratulations! This was a great project and I was really impressed with your gestures and expressions throughout the 31 days. The rivalry between your characters was also a great way to play with the prompt words. Well done!

Wow Chip, I really love how this one turned out! The color palette, linework, and subtle texture are really appealing. I first viewed this on my phone and liked A initially, but after looking at it on my desktop, I'm leaning toward B. I am sort of wondering what it would look like with the dark splatters on A, but without the white outlines. Something about those splatters gives it a lot of energy and interest.

Love seeing the continued focus on construction. I must admit I was a little taken aback in your last post when you said you weren't using reference. While I think it's good to stretch your memory and imagination skills, I'd encourage you to use reference in at least some part of your study plan, even if you are constructing or simplifying. You will learn a ton if you look at reference of a real hand, identify the simple structures that make it up, and then translate that simple structure onto paper.

Cool idea! Are you looking for feedback? If not that's totally fine. Just wondering.

It's definitely something I struggle with, but it's gotten a lot better by learning and applying the basics of perspective, doing a ton of sketches breaking down objects into simple shapes, and learning head construction. I've been slowly accumulating this knowledge over a period of 4 years or so. Currently I have to do a combo of the breaking down objects into simple shapes and looking at a variety of reference. For reference: Using my kid's action figures or dolls is sometimes helpful in visualizing different angles. I take photo reference of whoever's available and willing to help, sometime's it's myself. My husband's poses have been turned into little kids and warrior ladies. Sometimes I'm looking at google reference, sometimes I have to see how other artists have turned their characters, put them on the ground plane, foreshortened the limbs, what angles the hands are in, etc.

My basic construction knowledge usually gets me through the sketching stage, and then I have to fill in the gaps with reference.

Oh one more thing- you seem to be depicting fingers (44, 49) with hyper mobility:

Is this your intention? For the average person, bending the joint closest to the fingertips, while keeping the rest straight is pretty impossible. Not that there's anything wrong with depicting them this way, as long as you are aware that it's not exactly an average natural pose. Are you using reference?

Child-based diet. That's a new one I haven't heard of yet.

Looking great as always!

@KathrynAdebayo Those are really great ones!

@jason-bowen Mermaid and statue!

@Chip-Valecek "Little did Tessa know, that asking for prompt words on the SVS forum, would lead her to becoming known as a clown artist. . ."

@Darian Thanks. You can always contribute a word if you wish, but there's already certainly a ton!

Well, I think certain things are in play:

1. Mainstream American holidays all have their iconic color palettes and imagery. For St. Paddy's day you've got shamrocks, leprechauns and green, for Valentines you have red, pink, and hearts. Fall has it's own thing. Christmas has it's own set of things. Easter has it's own thing. Companies focus on using these themes and colors to help sell products and to help sell the idea of a holiday. You are going to get movies, tv shows, commercials, greeting cards, balloons, decorations, treats, books, magazine, coloring books, toys all using the same type of images and color palettes. No matter where you live in America, you are probably going to be exposed to all of this imagery when you go to the store, when you watch tv and movies, when you browse the internet. Fall for us is more associated to Halloween and Thanksgiving than a seasonal change. So when those holidays approach, we are exposed to the mainstream imagery through products and media, and we begin to associate colors and images to those holidays, much like St. Paddy's Day means green.

2. While we definitely have our own iconic imagery going on, it's not as directly tied to seasonal changes, as our landscape does not change very dramatically. Biggest changes are rainy times vs non rainy times and big surf vs flat ocean. You've got seasonal fruits coming and going, but that's not really tied to other dramatic changes in the landscape. It's not as fun to base your iconic imagery of Halloween and Thanksgiving with overcast weather as it is to associate it with the mainstream iconic imagery.

3. Hawaii already adopts asian, polynesian, and european cultural imagery and foods, it's not a stretch that we'd adopt iconic imagery from mainstream american culture.