Big bed and tough sleep

Some time ago I've been asked to make a try out (sample) illustration to the Andersen's story 'The princess and the pea'. Good picture would give me an opportunity to illustrate the whole book so I wanted to do it the best I could. Obviously :)

Oh, illustrating Andersen's fairy tales would be like an early Christmas! *__*

 I've started with designing the princess. I wanted her to be slim and 'long'. It fits princesses in my opinion :)

 This one looked nice enough so I stayed with her as my princess. Then it was time for the whole illustration's composition.

The main idea was to show how big is the bed because of all the blankets and mattresses. But the princess needed to be clearly visible too (the publisher wrote so).

 And that's what I liked the most.

 It has been quite hard to draw the princess, though. With this long neck and big head she looked like a lollipop. Or as if her head was just to fall off. It was hard!

 But I've managed :)

As you might have noticed - sketches were prepared for a horizontal illustration for two pages but the final is vertical. That's what happens when you read without understanding! Thankfully I've noticed this point of description before colouring, so I just had to play a bit with the sketch in Photoshop. Uf!

Still, I didn't get the job :(
But publisher said that they liked my illo a lot and they will remember me. We'll see what comes out of it.

A.