Really did not think I would make it in time!!

My story is about a fairy whose village is under attack from froggy invaders. She has to travel across the island - through frog territory - to the ancient lemon tree. Her village needs the juice from the lemons to ward off the frogs. Will she make it in time?

(just noting I just edited the file so it's a JPEG now)

I've been wanting to make stickers for yeeears, and I'm finally doing it in prep of opening my store!

Hi all! So last year I started working on my portfolio with the goal of having ten completely new pieces in my portfolio. I competed in every contest from November through July. Of the pieces I made I had one win and got a critique of some sort in the arena for all but one. So now that I'm pulling the final ten together for my portfolio I'm making the edits from the arena critiques. I thought it would at very least be interesting, and possibly helpful to see them. Happy to hear and additional comments or feedback!
Here we go:

November: Slowvember
The feedback from Lee here was that I left a huge empty dead space in the middle . The suggested correction was too either crop in on the kids or add text. I tried cropping the kids but it just made me miss seeing the bedroom! And it felt to centered and symmetrical that way. So instead I'm adding text and claiming it as a book cover

December: “...as she listened closely, she overheard them talking about her...” So this one actually one that month and also had the biggest critique! I was still trying to figure out my style here and it was very rushed . Feedback from Will and Jake: Spend some more time on the character design of the yeti, the scarf doesn't make sense and the feet could be more well defined. The background feels like a cafeteria but seems empty. The wall behind them is necessary but isn't reading correctly.

January:
“The tracks in the snow were unlike anything Will had ever seen before.” This one made it to the arena and did well. There was no negative feedback. Lee said it was just "luck of the draw" So I did not make any edits to this one.

February: nightfall. This was a failed style experiment. It's been sent to the land of illustrations past. R.I.P

March: “Everything was rattling, falling apart and breaking!!!”

This one also made it to the arena. Feedback: Everything is spaced very evenly and are similar sizes. Maybe move the girl to the right and vary more of the size and spacing of the objects.

April: "Lisa’s robot invention worked great, until it did this…"

This one also made it to the arena and was given the "luck of the draw" feedback, so I didn't make any edits.

May: Isolation:
This one did not make it to the arena, but when they did the quick feedback for everyone it also received the "luck of the draw" feedback.

And then I took a break in June so I could open my online store and spent my time focusing on smaller spot illos. For my current portfolio 6 of the 10 pieces came from the contests, and one from the podcast illo I got to do as a winner. So 7 of 10 came directly from SVSLearn prompts.

My take-a-ways from the experience: I was struggling to build my portfolio because I was lacking ideas and inspiration and I personally really need a deadline otherwise I procrastinate forever. Doing the contests were INCREDIBLY helpful for building my portfolio and I do feel like I've improved from doing it.

I also listened to some of the classes while I worked on these pieces and instead of doing the homework assignments I applied the knowledge from the courses to the pieces as I went. This helped since I work full time and have two toddlers and I do freelance projects. I really needed to prioritize my time.

Having a critqiue group is AMAZING, posting stuff here is helpful and awesome, but being able to have a group of other artists that you can quickly show ideas or see if something is working was VITAL for me.

My least favorite piece was the one that won (It was really rushed and I didn't feel confident in the final rendering). But this really taught me how truly valuable concept is over technical draftmanship. However, even if you have a fun idea and good draftsmanship, everyone has a personal aesthetic and you might not make it into the arena or win. That doesn't make it a bad piece, and it may even be some peoples favorite piece. In someways that makes me feel frustrated like shooting without a target, but then I remember that I'm making these pieces for me and my portfolio and it's OKAY. It's a lot better to make pieces that I'm excited about and are fun for me personally, than to try and appease everyone or to make art for the purpose of winning.

I needed to do a vignette for my portfolio so I decided to try something more simple/personal this month. AND I finally got to bust out my watercolors!

I love how whimsical everyone has gone this month. I feel so much envy.

"Yeti!!"
"Cover your mouth when you sneeze!"

Here is my submission!

Happy New Year all!

I was feeling inspired by the live demo with Brooklyn so I wanted to do a simple fun gesture illustration.

Honestly don't know how the judges are going to narrow it down this month. So many amazing entries~!

So I was all set to do something funny and I just couldn't get myself to commit to it. I just kept thinking of this image and eventually just had to paint it to get the feelings out.

@fmb I think that's a huge improvement!! The shading looks intentional and clean! Great work :):):)

@fmb yeah so I think when I first looked at images like this it felt like the dots are less organized than they actually are. But in the first image if you look close you can see that they clump together in the shadow and slowly get further apart as it transitions to a mid tone and then empty in the light areas. So although they aren’t lighter in value like the hills example I gave it’s pretty organized still. On the circular tubes you can especially see how it transitions to light and dark in a fairly even manner. I hope that makes sense?

@fmb Hi welcome!

I don't use this technique anymore, but I remember running into this same problem! Here are some things I noticed.

If you look at images like this you'll notice that to create value the dots both get more spread out and also lighter in value.

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/set-stipple-gradient-shadow-paper-sheet-1830414173

If your'e going for more of a comic book style where the value stays pretty close together I've noticed that the dots form more of a pattern and are lined up instead of randomly placed

Aww yay that’s so great!! “Bumbabee” is sooooooooo cute

@Sabrina-Gosselin I got one of each! Boy and then girl. It’s the perfect set .

My daughter is also very girly I’m not sure what to do. However my son is also into shorts which also confuses me LOL

Hoping one of them gets interested in art one day lol

Hello! Did you have twins or just two little ones? Mine are 3 and 4

Hello! I don't know anything about twitter so I'll only speak about Instagram. I started working on my instagram about a year and a half ago and just reached 20,000 followers! Here are some of my tips:

In addition to the course, listen to the podcast about social media as well, I found them both helpful even though a lot of information was repeated.

In the beginning, it does help to try and post a few times a week, or daily if you can manage it. I would prioritize Thursday - Sunday if not daily (Thursday is randomly one of the best days to post). When you post more often Instagram will share your work more.

As others said, you don't have many images up yet, so you'll want at least 9 up there before people will really consider your account active enough to start following it. Your last 4 posts were consistent, but your first two posts are really different so that might also be confusing people who might be interested in following you.

Promote to your friends and family that you have an instagram! Share it on your facebook or what not, often the first 100 followers are people that you know.

New features will always be highly promoted by the algorithm, so if you can figure out how to do reels those are getting a boost right now because they are the newest feature.

But for me the thing that I felt like really made everything "cilck" was understanding that it means to make "valuable" content. You'll hear this recommended by every article or person that you hear talk about how to make a successful social media account. I didn't really understand what that meant as an artist - if my art is good enough is it therefore valuable? For myself, what I came to realize is that "valuable content" means creating "sharable" content. You will only get so far with your own reach, if your instagram is inpiring and people to share it with others your reach will increase exponentially. Comics do well because they make people laugh, or feel understood and they want to share that with others. Tutorials or tips do well because people find them helpful and want to share. An illustration if it causes an emotional impact can do the same.

You can also participate in challenges and DITYS because the person hosting might then share your work.

There are of course other ways but that's been my thought process when creating my media accounts.

Hope that helps! Good luck

@brettb_draws not sure what program you are using, but try “save for web” as a jpeg you should be able to do larger than 72 dpi if you try it that way

@chrisaakins regarding the composition maybe this will help

http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2006/03/10-minute-art-school-composition-101.html?m=1

Right now you are doing the first one. I don’t agree with saying anything is a “no no” but you should be aware of the effect which it is having on your image. Cutting it in half makes it feel still, static. Maybe that’s what you want. But if you don’t then change it.

Personally I would save that kind of composition for something that I wanted to feel frozen or boring, and would otherwise do something more dynamic

@miranda-hoover Congrats Miranda! I love your work!