Here's my entry for the fairytale traveler's inn. I've had less time to participate in the forum this month, and I'm experimenting with a style that lets me work in watercolor and digitally together. What do you think?

Here's my Lunar Fairytale heroine, and her trusty tortoise sidekick (who still needs a name). Thanks for all the help and solid advice, everyone. I'm blown away by the work here.

Here goes with my yeti house! I'm learning a lot by participating. Good luck everyone!

Here's my (finally) finished entry! I am learning so much by committing to finishing a new portfolio piece every month.

@NessIllustration this is such useful information! Thank you for sharing it!
@LauraA congratulations on your success from unexpected directions! I hope you get a good gig out of all these requests. What a potentially exciting problem to have.
I'm sure you've build a great list of agencies to contact. A while ago @skillydan posted a list of 30-ish agencies to the forum, and I've added a few more to it. Maybe it'll be useful to you or somebody else here? Here it is:

Advocate Art Agency
Allied Artists/Artistic License
Arena Illustration Ltd
Astound Illustration Agency
The Art Agency
The Artworks
Bath Lit Agency
Beehive Illustration
The Big Red Illustration Agency
B.L. Kearley Ltd
the Bright Agency
Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency Ltd
the Cat Agency Inc
The Catchpole Agency
The Copyrights Group Ltd
David Higham Associates Ltd
David Lewis Agency
Elizabeth Roy Literacy Agency
Frances McKay Illustration
Good Illustration Ltd
Graham-Cameron Illustration
Inky Illustration
Jenny Brown Associates
Kids Corner
KJA Artists
LAW
Lemonade Illustration Agency
Maggie Byers-Sprinzles Agency
NB Illustration
The Organisation
Painted words
Plum Pudding Illustration
Purple Rain Illustrators
SPi Global US, Inc.
Storm Literary Agency
Sylvie Poggio Artists Agency
Symmetry Creative Production
Tugeau2
Sheldon Fogleman Agency
United Agents LLP
Vicki Thomas Associates

Hello everyone! I'm new here at SVS, bingeing on the podcast and getting tons of great info from these forum posts. Thank you to all the friendly and hardworking artists here!
I've spent the past few weeks exploring the possibility of a career transition to illustration. I've been a scenic artist and set designer for the past 17 years, painting and designing scenery for live theater. In that line of work, your paintings are prized for their versatility of style, not for their consistency of style.
So I've been sketching in gouache and pen and ink and Procreate for the past few weeks, trying to get comfortable working in my natural style and learning how to compose images with compelling characters. Here's a collage of some recent explorations. Each a sketch is between 2 and 5 hours of work, and originals around 8 inches max. I'd love some encouragement about what things are working well right now!
Thanks in advance!
Val

I've been thinking about the new Mars rover, and I imagined it had a personality, and wound up with this. I'm in love with it.

Doing a digital rework of an acrylic painting I made for my nephew last summer, adding characters, trying to control focal points.

I am living vicariously through all of your amazing beautiful art mascots. Thank you so much for sharing these! Here's my bird-legged houseplant, which is the closest thing I've got over here in my no-pets apartment.

In under the wire! Thank you to everyone who shared such helpful advice while I was working on this, and even if I didn't follow all the excellent advice, I'm thankful for it. You all are so inspiring.

He's adorable, and I agree with everyone else- the desk pose is charming! You can really see how he's trying to learn to be indoors. What if he was assembling a dam in one of the other poses?

He is so cute! I feel like the dot eyes are more engaging and relatable somehow, and i'm trying to figure out why. It might be just because he's looking directly at us? Anyway I vote for dot eyes.

@joosterwijk Congratulations!! Your card is so beautiful and sweet. Lovely work.

@Tiffany-Thomas This is brilliant. I love how you use color and pattern here. This piece is really inspiring!

@Jeremiahbrown WOW! Amazing job with texture, light, and color. Just awesome work.

Your style is so cute and so consistent, @lizardillo . I like the way you're controlling value from foreground to background. You've done a great job of creating a narrative that builds as it moves back in space. Nice work!

@Katie-Carling Thank you!

@Georgios-Christopoulos @Janette Thank you so much!

Here's my (finally) finished entry! I am learning so much by committing to finishing a new portfolio piece every month.

I'm finally calling this done. Swapping the candy canes for a troll-catching net helps finish the story, i think. This has been a great exploration of style for me. There are parts of it that are way overworked, and I've lost some of the watercolor quality I'd hoped to keep. I'm realizing that the more control I gain over value and light source, the more I have to figure out my plan of attack for color before I start painting. It's by no means perfect, but this piece feels like a great leap forward for me. Thanks for the help, SVS-ers.