Another illustration for my children's picture book project. This is the low point in the story for our musical duo, Sondrew the human and Ballad the gryphon. After years of practice, they're ready to make their debut for Ballad's fellow gryphons, who are perched in nests on an enormous pine tree and a nearby cliff. Unfortunately, before they even get to sing, the other gryphons laugh at them due to Sondrew's relatively tiny size and Ballad's cute hat and vest. Only Ballad's mother (top and center) tries to defend them.

Eventually, there will also be a similar illustration of their debut to the humans, in which their prospective audience runs away from Ballad in fear.

This picture has 12 characters in it (if you include the back of a gryphoness' head) and it took me ages to get this done. To all of you artists who draw huge, highly detailed crowd scenes, I salute you. Remind me never to do anything with this many characters again...except the one I just mentioned above :D.