My project in Animal Characters in Watercolor for Children’s Books course

Hello, my name is Bilyana (@beeleart) and I am from Bulgaria.
First of all, thank you, Julie Mellan, for the awesome course! I learned a lot and it was very well structured!

Everything inspires me, mostly people, nature and animals + emotions. I grew up with Disney movies (that's what we had) and only in the recent years I started exploring other animation studios and illustration artists. I like traditional mediums - pen and ink work, pencil, watercolor, sometimes acrylic and gouache. I have some training in graphic arts, and I love color, but it's very difficult for me!

The illustration I decided to draw, is a remake of a favorite memory of mine - my partner and I visited the mountains in a wonderful village and watched the stars one night. It was calm, quiet and I've never seen so many stars. The village is very small and we were almost alone. Here are 2 pictures - of the place we observed the stars from and my old sketch:

Here, I am adding pictures of the process. Because I liked how my partner hugged my while, I was all jumpy and adoring the beautiful night sky, I decided to keep the same pose, but to try and make it a bit more dynamic:

because these sketches are too rough, I decided to try and explore the facial expression - of the cute, caring and more reserved car (my partner) and that of me - the excited, jumpy bunny with big eyes and emotional personality. I also decided to squint the eyes of the cat and push his ears back, also push his cheek to the bunny:

Next, I made a bigger sketch and decided to merge it with the faces sketch in photoshop, because I wasn't sure if I will be able to repeat it exactly the same on a clean paper again. After that, I printed the mock up and traced it on top for clearer lines:

The next step, was to transfer the sketch on watercolor paper. I used Fabriano, cold press, 300g/m2, because that is what I had in hand... I stretched with paper tape, because I didn't have else. It was not very good - I got some bulking, after I started putting color on, but it worked... fine.
I added shadows several times, because I was not happy with the intensity and placement.
Oh, and I added a lantern. In fact we had some candles in the garden, because it was very dark, but I also thought the lantern will add some more extra nice light into the night scene:

Finally, I was ready with the shadows.
I didn't do color scheme samples, because I wanted to have blue/purple sky, and I wanted the outfits to be the same as we were wearing that night. May be not the perfect choice!..

Not quite happy with my colors, but I already know is one of my weak points, alongside composition and anatomy...
Not sure if the lantern light turned out as I imagined and also, the shadows somehow disappeared. I also was not sure how to make the light that comes from the sky...

But here is the final result!

I hope you enjoyed seeing my process! And goodluck with the course!

I'd be more than happy to hear the opinion of our tutor - Julie Mellan, though I know she is very busy!

I'd be very glad to hear her constructive criticism as well, which will help me improve!

Some questions:
- Do you think, I could show the sky light on their faces better?
- How I could make the lantern light better? Should I've made it with yellow gouache, instead of white?
- Is the bunny's head to stretched?
- How I can improve the contrast of the different planes in the picture?
- What else can be done better!

Thanks! Cheers!