Wheat Field and getting ahead

I did these two illustrations for the monthly Dreamstime contest.  This is my third month in a row trying to upload images to the contest (I haven't won yet...but it's not about that...exposure is more important...until I do win, of course).  The wheat field background was originally going to be the field that the farmer was standing in...but I went a little too far with the detail and it kind of pushed the Farmer completely out.

Then I had to figure out a background for the farmer - and instead of detailed, I went very simple.

The result fits with the style I was working in.

The contest started this last thursday - it's important, if you're going to be in the contest to upload images at the beginning to give yourself a head start on the competition.  First of all you get more views...half way through and even at the end there are too many images and they tend to get lost.  And secondly, the longer they're featured on the front page (each image randomly shows up on the front page of Dreamstime to promote the contest), the more chances a person has of licensing that image.

And finally - I usually start with a circle when I draw a head.  And this time, since I was drawing an older fella, I thought I should change it up and went with a different shape.  I think it worked out quite nicely.  The circle head tends to make my characters look too young (which is fine when drawing a kid, but not as nice for older folk).