Childhood and Chickens

I did this as a portfolio piece around this time last year. I wanted to illustrate my passion for... Illustrating?? Hahaha, you know... what I mean...

Because this is older and I've had a year to look at this, it is now CRITIQUE TIME!
I was really proud of this piece, but now there are some things I would like to change:

ANATOMY/FABRIC: Her legs and possibly her arms are too long for her body/age (She is supposed to be nine or ten years old), and the way the dress is bunched up makes the anatomy look funky.

COLOR SCHEME: The color scheme is ALL OVER THE PLACE. If I were to color this now, I would try to stick to a narrower color pallet because my eye gets confused by the purple bows; there is nothing else in this picture that is purple (should have made them red and the dress white). The baby chicks blend in with the yellow dress and they are hard to see. The barn stands out too much, but it would be fixed if I re-colored the bows.

STYLE CONTINUITY: The style of the girl against the style of the chickens... I feel like it could be more consistent. Make the birds more detailed.

There are also things I adore about this picture and would like to see in more of my artwork:

EMOTION: I feel so nostalgic and happy when I look at this image, because it's taken straight from my memory banks. I loved my chickens so much when I was little! I may not have looked like this young lady, but I DID get a dress absolutely filthy doing this exact same thing.

BRAIDS: Braids are one of my favorite subjects! I really enjoy adding all the details needed to make them look stunning. They work very well in my favorite sort of composition, with something curving across the page to lead the eye.

LINE: This is one of my best jobs with line art. I hope I scanned this before I colored it, because I want to color it again! I'd also like to have a hard copy of the line art to hang up. If I didn't scan the lines, you can bet I'll be re-drawing this scene in the future.

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This artwork is not free to use!

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