Very excited

Hi all! :) I have some happy news to share. I have been contacted to begin work on my first children's book to be published late next year. I am still waiting on a contract, but they have offered me the job as we work out the details. I am super excited. I don't want to share the specifics until it is totally official, but here's hoping I can do so soon. :) Here is one of the little characters that I submitted for consideration. The character will not be this little guy unfortunately. LOL My work would have halfway done, but they want an older character...which I will be happy to create. :)

October was unseasonably cool. The newsmen claimed it had been the wettest one on record, too.

One day, late in the month, the sun battled its way through the ever present clouds and shined briefly on the world.

Juan and Levont took advantage of the break to burn off energy at the neighborhood playground in the watery sunlight.


I needed some more boys and more ethnic flavor in my portfolio. Comments?

Adelia Holds Out...

So I finished with the color.  I originally drew it to have the color taper out on the edges...but even though I like the look of that on other people's drawings, I couldn't bring myself to do it - so I extended the ground hill and made it a full page image.  I'm posting it here because I really like this piece - and even though it originally was going to just be a quicky drawing for IF, I took it a lot further than I originally expected...and I'd like to know if anyone has any suggestions.

The tiny conference is on the 7th, so I'm hoping to get many a new piece in my portfolio.  And I gotsta spruce up the old ones a bit.  What sucks is that I was originally doing Adelia in a completely different style of painting (using the grass brush in photoshop)...which made for quite a nice texture (in my opinion) but I've moved away from that and am painting her normal (with regular brushes at lower opacity)...anyway - that has nothing to do with this, so whatever.

Oh - and one last thing - should I do a frame around it?  Or should I just leave it as is...?  I'm leaning towards a black line framing, but that's just because that's what I do with almost all of my pictures...

Adelia: Left out - FULLY EDITED AND DONE!

EDIT #2 - I took the piece out for another ride and rechanged and readded. Thanks again for your suggestions! Oh, and I changed the clouds...so they're not sucky anymore. I can't seem to move them around...so the new one is there, and the old one is there...I tried for side by side, but this was the best I could do...but you get the point...One is good, one is suck.

Well...this piece took FOREVER! I've been used to doing a lot less scenery and characters in my drawings - so putting 5 characters into one - and one where they're not in snow - meant that this one just took forever to finish. But is it done? I'm putting it up here, before my blog - because I want to know what you think of the color and everything all together. Even if you see something wrong with a character or line or perspective or whatever. I still have my vector image preserved, so I can still easily change my lines...but what do you think?

I'm going to attend the San Diego one day conference (the ny one is too far) on the 7th of February...and I want this to be my lead image in the port review and if I get the chance to show anyone. So, obviously, it'd be important to make this image the best it can be.


EDIT: I've put it up on my blog - with Pete's suggestions! Thanks for your help Pete! Also - if anyone else wants to say anything - I'd love to hear any other suggestions! I would have put the new version up on this site, but for some reason it won't upload...