Great news! I've received the go ahead from my agent to start producing full-color artwork for the picture book dummy. This is an important milestone, because that means the story itself is in a pretty solid place and is at a point where my agent, Liz, can start selling it to editors/publishers! I just need to provide three pages of finished artwork to provide an idea of my artistic style and final work would look like.
Maybe easier said than done, but it's more home turf for me than writing a book for kids. At least it's familiar territory.
Liz has recommended a range of scenes for me to fully render, including:
Action scene
Close up scene
Landscape
I have a few to choose from, but I might end up doing two close ups: one of the boy and another of the ox, as both characters are important to the story. I did not travel with my best painting materials because I didn't anticipate needing them this trip to the US, but I will try to sketch these concepts more thoroughly and make the line work composition digitally before heading back to Taiwan in early January. Looking forward to sharing more as the art comes together.