lots of kids

I've done a lot of illustrations of anthropomorphic characters...it's all an excuse to not draw kids.  I just had no interest in it at all...and there really hasn't been a reason if you can turn a character into a panda kid or a little square skunk.

But the more I draw, and the more projects I have, I've realized that I should probably practice it up a bit.  It's time to brave that frontier.  Plus, it makes a children's book portfolio a bit more rounded if there aren't just animal characters.

This was my first attempt at kids:

It was okay - very simple stuff...I struggled with hairstyles...but managed more or less.

Then I had an idea of doing a more stylized cartoon version of a kid:

I thought these would be more of a paper doll type of character.  I just never got around to designing all the clothes that they would eventually wear...so I left them like this and forgot about it.

And most recently I finished a group of new kids

This time I actually looked up some hairstyles and I think the results are definitely noticeable.  I'm still working on it.  But I like the direction it's going...especially from where it started.  I actually have about 20 heads and hairstyles (between all the boys and girls) but there' no need to put them all up here.

The next step is going to be drawing them in action - playing softball...jumping rope...and stuff like that.

These are just a couple of other kids I've drawn recently - but they were posted as their own blog, so I'm making the picture really small...