Lilla's Class Week 3

This weeks assignment was to create a book cover (or interior spread)
for Hans Christian Andersen's tale, The Snail and the Rose Tree. I never
read this one before and wow, it was unexpected. The snail was just a
grumpy nasty guy and he was interacting with a beautiful rose tree.
I had my vision for this right away, I wanted to paint it with exuberance
and create a beautiful world that you'd want to enter. I painted
it in layers and put it all together in photoshop. That way I had the
ability to play around with it a bit.
Of course I had my doubts midway, should I have used illustrator to draw?
Should it be cuter? But in the end I stuck with my original vision and
I'm quite happy with the results. I made some changes along the way, The
snail needed more attitude so I added his crossed arms and I fussed with
the color a bit.
Here are some of the sketches,

Here is an early snail, but he wasn't grumpy enough.

I like the roses on white too.
This has been a real growing process, When the class is over in 2 more weeks
I'll be working on my portfolio tho round out everything I've learned.