Thumbnail critique. Children’s book portfolio rebuild

[kassadoodle]

Hello everyone! I’m working on reconstructing my portfolio to make it more children’s book focused and work more on my technique to discover my style.
Anyway here’s a thumbnail of my next personal piece I’m working on. I’d love some feed back on it

Hope the quality is well enough to read.
It’s an old Polish woman tending to some mushroom spirits/creatures whose design will look like this:

Any advice is on anything is much appreciated.

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for the piece if it’s helpful at all
https://pin.it/crbzfar4nqvpcg

[riftweaver]

I don't have specifics, but I think it seems like a nice concept and the thumbnail looks promising. The mushroom spirits are adorable in your little sketches, so I think there is some potential there.

If you are looking for critiques, you might get better feedback if you ask some questions. For example, ask about your character design; or your composition. I'm rather new myself, but that is what I've learned, so I pass that tip on to you.

[TianLian]

The thumbnail really seems interesting and eye catching. I like the design of the granny and the little mushroom spirits.

[braden H]

Nice work! That cat's tail is going to create some troublesome tangents with the tree and darker background elements if you leave it as-is.

I might raise the dark background up behind the light value cat so that he's completely in front of a dark backdrop if you get what I mean.

[TessaW]

Loving it so far. It feels slightly unbalance because of the values to the left of the granny aren't quite balancing out the darkness of the tree and the visual weight of the cat and the mushrooms. I think it would be a fairly easy fix in the rendering stage, if you think it's a problem. But overall I think it's working well.

[kaitlinmakes]

Hi!
I am in love with the designs of your mushroom people - I think the idea of putting their face at the very base of the shroom with these big floppy heads/foreheads is adorable and funny and something I haven't seen before.
My critique is in a place where I'm just starting to learn from - but it looks like with your comp that you could benefit from finding the big shapes forms and doing value on those. Your woman has a lot of different values in her which makes it hard for her to stand out - but maybe if her value and the cat and the mushroom people can all be of a lighter value, where the whole middle ground is the darkness of that grass. This would allow her to pop out more and be the true focus.