New Scenes from Froggy

Well, the next assignment in my class was to sketch three pivotal scenes in the story (Froggy Went a Courting). I had a very hard time with this assignment--definitely using some brain pathways I am not very familiar with. My drawing really has to come up to speed. What I'm realizing is that unlike painting, where you can kind of edit the composition to match your skill set, with illustration, there are just some things you have to put in. So here are some of my efforts, with notes attached:

The text for this sketch was: "He took Miss Mousie on his knee and said Miss Mousie will you marry me. Without my uncle Rat's consent, I wouldn't marry the president."

This was the only one of my three sketches that was really well-received. I had to agree, because the other two were just causing me all kinds of problems (as you will see later). The guys thought this sketch was good "storytelling," and they liked how I introduced Uncle Rat in the scene by way of the portrait. Their main suggestions were: crop the image to get closer, have the portrait spotlighted on the facing page, and only show a portion of it in the larger image. Here is the sketch the guys suggested:

The next scene I chose was: "Where should the wedding supper be, way down yonder in the hollow tree." I didn't hate this sketch--it has a nice layout, I think. The guys, however, felt it missed the main point of the text, which was to introduce the Hollow Tree--the scene for most of the action in the story. Here's the layout they suggested, which really shows the tree as a destination. One of the amazing things about my teachers is that they can come up with amazing visual problem solving on the spot.

I'm not even going to show the third scene because the issues are so similar to what I just showed in the Hollow Tree scene. I need to focus on the storytelling a little more and think about what I really want to say with layout.