Had a great chat with Murray. I sent him a handful of the sketches I was working on looking for pointed input and editorial. He was wonderful. More decorative illustration milestone conventions for me to integrate into my thinking while I work. I started talking color and Murray said that the black and white hangs together and I could leave it at that. We then talked about color just to see where he sat on it..I mentioned the hot/cool thinking that many of my real live illustration friends use (particularly those that were trained as real illustrators)--the whole red/blue, orange/turquoise, hot/cold thinking as a way to think of coloring an image. I thought that maybe Murray would expound on this convention...and instead, I got something bigger. A big handle to individually assess my work as I am going. What I needed to do is broadly think about the balance of the picture--and that balance needed to be either 80%/20%, 75%/25%-- something more than 50/50 from the color (warm/cool), the contast balance (dark/light), the balance of the family of shapes (sharp/soft, ambiguous/defined))--It is, as Murray said, a checklist of how to review the work-- I love this thing. His input on the bees, the birds, the details, definition of the heads--all good. More to do, more bugs to draw.
Onward to the month of love.