From the easiest digital section, to the worst

It was a bit of a hassle trying to get this image to feel right.

The characters all fit together nicely, that was fine, except for a lack of consideration on my part as to where the light source was coming from. They all don't match in that sense, but i'm sure I can think of a solution around that. Its the surroundings that were a real pain. I had an Image of a little tin hut, filled with hay for "furniture"/ something to lay on. I had real difficulty with both the ridges on the walls and the hay. I believe you can see what Im going for with the walls, but they're clearly crude. The hay literally looks like a cloud, nothing hay like about it.

I tried out converting an image of hay to halftone, but that really didn't help things.

The hay was scrapped, and a grass brush was introduced, awful, really poor decision on that one. Just looks rough and really out of place, especialy considering the imagery of the rest of the book.

I thought then a splash of colour was the missing element, throw a fire in there, a nice thing for the group to gather round. Didn't really save the image, but seemed like somewhat of a step in the right direction, the fire needed better execution.

Out of frustration with the image, I stripped everything away added a gradient, so i could stick it on Instagram. This helped a lot though, the lack of background totally added to the scene, I want the scene to be relaxed, so having the people all cramped up totally detracts from that feeling. Keeping this and adding a fire seemed to be the way to go.

A quick mock up has me feeling that I may be correct, Im going to make some mono type flames, and Im gonna need to strip down the colours, as this clearly goes over the two colour limit right now.