I was stuck for a while on the story and how best to represent the song lyrics, but I knew that I wanted to showcase the warm relationship and strong connection between the characters. A sunset popped into my mind as I was thinking about this, so that's why I sketched a few to see if I should use them actively in the comic. I decided it would be the most impactful for the final panel, especially with the lyrics informing us of the happy ending. It would make the moment more powerful.

With the sunset in mind, I generated these thumbnail visuals for the cover of my comic. 

I got a lot of eye-opening feedback: the main one being - I don't have to illustrate every line! I only need to show the important parts of the narrative (i.e. the connection between the characters). Due to the repetitive format of my comic, the reader knows what to expect, leaving no surprises or impact. The reader easily becomes lost as a result. I need to stay focused on what I need to emphasise within the narrative.

The feedback I got was that I lost the level of detail I had with the piece inspired by Gilbert's work, compared to my pencil experimentation. To improve on my Holland piece, I should have used a bold, contrasting colour, like a hot red, in the background. This would have peered through the blues, yellows and greens in the sky.

I wanted to keep the mixed colours visible, so I didn't blend in the sky very much.

I was concerned about building layers of watercolour on this shiny paper because it doesn't stick very well to the surface, so it was in danger of being rubbed off if I was too heavy-handed with the brush. However, I managed fine in the end.

The different colours were visible throughout the painting, but towards the end, it became lost because of the blue spotlight against the blue sky.

I chose Keeping's style for psychological horror, Holland's style for sci-fi and Gilbert's style for the children's book. I kept perspective and diverse chair designs in mind when forming the compositions. It was a lot to consider, but it helped me form the ideas quicker because I was able to link everything together.

Examples of the artists' work:

I noticed Anne Yvonne Gilbert does quite a bit of colour mixing with her pencils so I tried out different combinations with my own pencils to try and recreate the same effect. With Charles Keeping, I experimented with various surfaces that could restrict the watercolour and ink, but I don't think I quite got the effect. After inquiring a tutor about this, I was recommended paper with shiny surfaces, so I will be using that for the final piece. Brad Holland's minimal paint technique required a lot of scratching and patience. I tried to make the process smoother by adding a bit of water to my brush and I think it did the trick.

I took progress photos for the compositions I used acrylic as a primary medium for.

From this, I learnt that visual clichés were not something to avoid, but instead a powerful tool for communication. It's more important to be able to utilise these in clever and innovative ways.

This is one of my less dynamic compositions since I was focused solely on maximum contrast with the sizes of the letters.

I definitely struggled the most with this composition. Ironically, my Power piece had the weakest composition. I tried to show the A's were trying to fight against the powerful W, but it looks messy, and not in the good way.

This one was quite fun, I wanted to show playfulness without implying childishness by using this colour scheme because it felt more interesting to do so and also, it meant that I was playing around with the prompt as well.

This composition is my favourite since there's just something about diagonals... Also, the idea for this came very easily.

The varying levels of opacity for some letters definitely elevated the entire composition, in my opinion. It ties the foreground and background together really well.

I made sure this contrasted greatly with the Masculine composition. I find the C arrangement really visually satisfying and it may be because of the contrast in stroke width.

I wished the purple looked more visually appealing and harmonious with the other colours, but this was the natural result and it would be wrong to alter it. The tonal scales were difficult because I knew I was in danger of an endless cycle of repainting and shifting the tones slightly. Even though I did fall into this trap, I tried to be minimal about it. I did not have much of an issue with mixing a wide range of colours for the Communication Squares, I just wish I remembered to use tape for crisper edges.

At the feedback session, it was relayed to me that there were generally too many white backgrounds in my visuals. I think, particularly for the idea in the middle, I should have chosen a medium-toned colour, somewhere in between the brown table and the green spirit. This could have been either a green-based grey to tie in with the other colours, or be a murky mix of colder shades to contrast with the foreground instead.

I agree that the coloured background has a more professional feel since it enhances the overall composition.