Matt's Children's Portfolio Progress

[Matt Baldwin]

Hi everyone, very glad to be part of this community.

Matt Baldwin from Australia here. I'll be posting my progress in this thread as I build a body of work with intention of working as an illustrator primarily in the world of Children's Book publishing. I welcome any feedback on the work that I post here, and in turn of I will of course look through the forums to provide feedback to those also seeking. I'm hoping to complete and new piece every one to two weeks.

Here's my first piece I'm working on. This is a rough sketch with some basic value and lighting.

[lmrush]

This is so great, love how comfortable and happy he is on his monster chair

[mattramsey]

@Matt-Baldwin looking good so far. At this stage my only "crit" would be to work on the eye stalks a bit more--they are definitely an interesting part of the creature and right now (in this initial sketch phase) they are kinda just drooping down and overlapping at odd tangents.

Looking forward to seeing it colored!

[evilrobot]

Great start. I'd suggest to work on the perspective on the piece. Get your ground plane in and have everything match it. Right now the books and the feet are a bit strange. Get yourself some reference images for the hands and feet make the same pose and have someone take a picture of you so you can see how the forms wrap. Nice work looking forward to the updates.

[Matt Baldwin]

@lmrush thanks, I love the idea that children and creepy monsters can co-exist

[Matt Baldwin]

@mattramsey & @evilrobot thanks for the kind words and feedback. I'm currently working on all your suggestions and hope to post progress in the next day or so. Cheers.