Birdwoman

I finished my book jacket.  Here's a better (though far from perfect) picture.  For those of you just tuning in, I'm a fine artist trying to branch out into book illustration.  In the process of building my illustration portfolio, I've somehow (please don't laugh) kind of started writing a book.  It's really just bits and pieces of a story, but I needed something to illustrate, and so here I am.  Here's a detail:

Today I started playing around with ideas for black and white illustrations that would go inside the book.  I originally thought I was going to create them using my pen and ink and scratchboard technique, but that seemed too stark for the mood of my story.  So I played around in my sketchbook with brush, pen and ink:

I liked it, but it still didn't feel quite right.  I wanted something more ephemeral, so I tried some pencil: