A Children's Picture Book Exploration

I've been working on creating more children's picture book illustrations for my portfolio. I'd love to get more work illustrating kid's books and magazines and I need more applicable work to show. So I created this fun little fluff ball of a character and decided to make her a dog walker. I love the initial sketch, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about the color. Paint it? Work digitally? So I decided to do it all. I created a variety of finished pieces and explorations to see what I liked.

Here's the first sketch...

I inked it on translucent marker paper using my trusty Micron 01...

I scanned the inked image and vectorized it in Adobe Illustrator to try out some flat color...

I also decided to give it a go in traditional watercolor paint and colored pencil...

My last exploration was with Adobe Photoshop painting...

I think they each have their own unique feel. And I can't say it's really helped me narrow down what I like! But I'm certainly learning a lot. The process is definitely worth it.