I am joining! but to be honest, now I am wondering myself if I able to do that? haha
I am thinking of using the prompt and make my own tale.

@Braden-Hallett I can live with facebook :-).
Just wish we could do everything in SVS forum. I love the community here. Hope to see SVSlearn website/forum has features that support forming critic groups in the future.

So excited with both the november challenge and January critic group. I am in, I am in :-).

While it holds true that PS is used by many designers, I believe it boils down to what software you are comfortable using. An easy-to-use interface is key in the design process. You seem to have gotten the hang of Sketchbook as well, from the illustration you have shown here. To be on the safe side, it does help to know the basics of PS. However, do go with your artistic gut feeling. Hope this helps! All the best!

@jdubz Oh nice suggestion, will check out other programs, cheers

@sigross You'll have it down really fast. Most of the features translate from the other apps. The only real difference is getting familiar with the publishing view that has a lot of pages and exporting.

@Lee-White Thanks Lee. I really appreciate it. So simple. This will help so much from now on. 🌟

If like me, you do like bird illustrations, there's some epic free hi-res bird illustrations here -

Article on Colossal:
All 435 Illustrations from John J Audubon’s ‘Birds of America’ Are Available for Free Download

John James Audubon's Birds of America is a portal into the natural world. Printed between 1827 and 1838, it contains 435 life-size watercolors of North American birds all reproduced from hand-engraved plates
Birds of America website

That’s great news 👍

@NessIllustration That is great news Vanessa!

@Erin-Cortese 😭😭😭You helped me so much here and I am going to miss you. You will do well in whatever path you choose, I am certain. Thank you for everything!

I find I cant log into Autodesk Sketchbook anymore I even created a new account and reinstalled it .It just wont let me log in anyone else having problems are am i doing something wrong

thank you for sharing this!

Cool! Thank you for sharing!

@TessaW

Monster-19.pdf

Monster-20.pdf

@Kat

Monster-28.pdf

This turned out great!

@Kekkerz86 That's very valid! Astound is a big agency where everything runs smoothly like a machine, I can see how for some people that might not be a good fit. I checked out your agency and it seems to be much more personal and prefers to focus on a small roster of highly talented artists. That seems a lovely system and I'm so happy for you that you found your perfect fit 🙂

I'm personally someone who's more introverted and I like when there are established systems so things run smoothly without me having to reach out to someone every time. Astound has an artist portal where I can see all my jobs and pending payments without having to talk to a soul (I can see how this would be a plus for some, but a minus for others haha!) I like thinking that my agent spends most of her time looking for work for me and her other artists, not on the phone all day talking to potential recruits. As an anxious person, I would have felt bad taking so much of the agent's time, whereas with the third party I felt very comfortable asking as many question as I needed and taking as much of her time as I needed. I also felt more comfortable asking more straight-forward questions about the agency's ethics and functioning and trusted I would get honest answers from someone who isn't within that company themselves. But for someone who values forming a strong one-on-one relationship with a specific agent, I can see how not even getting a phone call with them before signing would be a red flag. And then, at Astound you're assigned a "main" agent but may work with others sometimes. I just got offered a job from a British publisher, so one of the agents in Britain that has a closer relationship with that publisher is the one that will be working with me on this one if we end up signing. I personally prefer that the agent that knows this company best will be the one negotiating on my behalf, but I know many artists don't want to bounce around different agents. @Perrij these are all things to take into consideration. Do you think you would fit better with a bigger, perhaps colder agency, or a smaller more personal one?

@Kayla-Groening It's a project about the history of Key West, Florida 🙂 It goes from conquistadors to the 80s, with a sense of humor haha

Id put at least 2 finished illustrations in there. I usually do one full spread and then another 1-page.

@NelsonYiap make sure you check out your region, and get on their mailing list. Regions have critique groups, and smaller conferences where you still get to meet agents, editors and other peers, but the price to attend is usually a fraction than flying out to New york or LA. Im the Illustrator Coordinator for our Hawaii chapter and love helping out our group.

I thought about getting calendars done too, but its expensive, and then you have the useless overstock of the ones that didnt sell. If you have a nice printer at home, would it be possible to design a nice one, printed on nice paper, and then you only print out the ones that you sell, maybe making the calendar a postcard size?