I think this is the hardest piece I have worked on for me. I guess perspective is not my strongest side. Thank you for everyone who has helped out along the way - you guys made my process so much more fun and engaging.

When I was an interaction designer, there was a saying in the industry "celebrate your failer". I did not really understand why, but now I really like that approach. SO I am going to celebrate my first "No" from my editor.

Yesterday, I submitted my first completed picture book dummy to an editor (we had good work experience in the past, I just finished illustrating a book for her recently). Within 2 hours, I received a rejection via email with an in-depth critique on the dummy. I was so excited and I almost said "fantastic" out loud.

I was excited because:

1. I finished a picture book dummy for the first time (a huge milestone for me).
2. Someone professional actually read it and cared enough to write a thoughtful crit during her working hours.

Now I am back to the drawing board with revisions to do. :-).

Here is my entry for this month. So glad I made it.
For the first time, I did my svs monthly challenge with traditional medium. I did not have access to a big enough scanner for today. So the image is taken by iPhone and I did a slight re-touch on photoshop.

Hi, everyone. I have a big news - I just signed a contract with Plum Pudding Illustration agency in the UK this week. I am waiting for them to update info on their website to make it offical :-).

Before the lockdown came, I hesitated to contact agents, because I did not feel "I am ready" (as most of you may feel the same way about your own work). I thought I need to just add a couple more pieces. Then during the first period of the lockdown, everything became so surreal and the world felt upsidedown. I was not able to consentrate on making art, so I started to reach out - writing to agents, editors and art directors. Then I was very lucky to recieve an offer, and now I am preparing for a new adventure.

It was interesting to illustrate the 3 point perspective episode "risky business" around the same time I got the agency offer. I felt I am that bunny who is walking through that door to the unkown territory. It is super exciting and a little scary too.

Thank you so much, SVS family, for all the critiques, advises on the illustration busniess, and surpport&encouragement. Thank you so much @Will-Terry @Lee-White @Jake-Parker for creating the SVS community.

"Love is magic."
I got lots of help from the SVS family in the forum with this piece. Learned a lot. Thank you so much.

I also revisited my piece, and could not resist to touch up a bit more of the muddy color. Sorry for my re-submission.

I enjoyed this and it also drove me a bit crazy. Thank you so much for the critique along the way. Always making my image so much better when I share the process on the forum. Love seeing all the submissions. The variety is wild this month.

Am I too late?

Than you so much for so much constructive feedback I have received so far. I did not get to completely finalize this piece. So I submit what I have so far, and will continue to work on it in 2020.

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you get to have time to dream big and silly dreams in 2020.

@Rachel-Horne I love your re-work. It is calm and beautiful, and whimsical.
I think you can do everything traditionally. But it might be smart to keep developing a digital way of making illustration or hybrid way. This is something I myself would love to spend time and digg a bit deeper this year - finding a traditional/digital hybrid way of making art. I consider doing some experiement of painting elements on separte paper, and put them together in photoshop - it is like collage, but doing the collage part digitally.

@Elena-Marengoni I am glad you find my thoughts helpful. One thing I forgot to mention which might be super relevant for you: I find the work experience /mind set of interaction design is very useful when transiting to do illustration. For example, a holistic approach to problem solving, be empathic to end-users, listen the voices of all stakeholders, skills of rapid prototyping, skills of communicating with clients/other stakeholders, many things we do all the time with interaction design /service design projects are very applicable to the busniess of illustration. The tangible things we make with interaction design is very different from Illustration, but the way of thinking has so much in common.

So you are not starting from scratch, you can bring so much from your past expereicne. It took me a year or so to connect those dots. But once I understood this, it really helped.

@Elena-Marengoni I completely relate to your situation. I worked as an interaction designer for 10 years before switching to do children's book. My main reason is also related to hard to get life/work balance in the world of design & technology driven work environment.

I do not think you are nut, and it is a matter of time that you will make it if you keep doing it. Everyone's journey is different. I am sharing a few things that helped me to get where I am now - finished one children's book, signed with an agent, but far from making a living with illustration full time. I hope this make sense to you.

1. Practice as often as you can on the craft.
   Set aside time to draw everyday, if you can, or at least as often as you can. For me it really shows after over 2 years.

2. Podcasts are great way to get industry knowledge. That really helped me to know what I am getting myself into :-). Here are a list of my favorite podcasts.
   https://illustrationdept.com/podcast
   https://picturebooking.libsyn.com
   https://lgbpodcast.libsyn.com
   And of course, our all time favorite 3 point perspective

3. Get personal feedback on your work, and invest on courses/workshops that help you to level up.
   Svs forum is super helpful of getting concrete feedback on single pieces I am working on during the last 2 years or so. I have attended a few interactive courses with svs as well, everytime I did that, my skill levels up visibly. I also recommend getting portfolio reviews from people working in industries, or other experienced illustrators.

4. Reaching out, be part of the community
   In the begining of my artist journey, I did not know anyone who does what I want to do. It felt very lonely, and I was self-doubting a lot. It really helped when I started to have illustrator friends, both in real world, and online. I felt normal, and it made me feel comfortable calling myself "an illustrator", even though I was not making money at all with illustration by then. The trick is to teach your brain that if you do illustration most of the day, then you are an illustrator - money does not define your profession, what you do with your day does. My brain is more productive when I accept myself as an illustrator, and stop having identity crisis every second week.

@EliaMurrayArt thank you so much for the showcase. very inspiring work :-).

a bunch of pencil drawing, traditional and digital pencils. What is your go-to tool for pencil drawings?

@LauraA You could make any of these thumbnails work. A total winner concept, love it. I agree with @aprilshin's draw-over, it would make more sense ot have one wolf on the roof if you want to emphasis the "Lone wolf" concept :-).

@ArtofAleksey really. I have to read his book again. I have a copy of his kickstarter book for character design.

@ArtofAleksey I have limited vocabulary in English too, hehe. But I find the act of "pause and think, then draw" alone is huge.
I remeber hearing an interview with Pascal Campion that he talked about he would go for a walk and saw something he wanted to draw, and he would describe everything in words for himself to remember so he can go home and paint the scene. And the method of keywords taught by Lee and David in SVS has kind of changed my way of creating art. It is fasinating to me how words play a huge role in the process of art-making.

@ArtofAleksey thanks for sharing your class work. I started watching the video yesterday, and I have not got around to do the homework yet. But there are a few things in the first couple of lessons really stuck with me, and I could not stop thinking about it.

1. naming the pose (with a verb and an adjective).
   I have never ever thought about doing this when I am doing a gesture drawing. THIS is a game changer for me. I think I am going to do this with every posture I drew for anything from now on. This just makes so much sense.

2. the emotion of a line.
   This concept is something I am aware of , but puzzeled with. I do not know how to use this information. Her lecture just clearified this a lot to me. I think again this applies to art-making in general, not just gesture drawing.

@Rachel-Horne I am glad my explaintion is understandable.
I uses Procreate a lot, often I use procrate to do 80% of the painting, and do last 20% in photoshop. I sometimes do paintings all the way in Procreate as well. I have not got the make my own brushes yet, I stick with pretty basicl stuff. My favorite brushes are the default ones that comes with procreate. I uses 6b pencil, and artist crayon for most of the stuff. Recently I started to explore the Artistic brushes that comes with Procreate.
Depending what traditonal media you want to mimic, you can probably find a set of digital brush that does pretty good job, or ask around on the forum. I think there are many Procreate Ninjas in this forum :-).