Creating a frontispiece image for a children's picture book

One of the pictures I’m repainting is the frontispiece image. The frontispiece is one of the front matter pages that precedes the content. It’s usually a picture that captures the overall feeling of the book. My original cover image will become the frontispiece, and I’ll do a new front and back cover images. It’s originally a picture of Jimmy Jay leaning against the feared chimney; the new version will be Jimmy and Buddy leaning against the chimney.

It’s a work in progress. I’ve been sketching on this picture for three days in an effort to get some good body language going. The fact that Buddy Butterfly is a flying insect with 10 appendages doesn’t make it any easier. Yes, he has two arms, four legs, and four wings. I’m not complaining — he’s my anti-hero and I’ll own up to creating him.

This is definitely a work in progress. The first edit was to flip the image horizontally to get the position of the chimney to match the rest of the pictures in the book. I haven’t got them right yet.

This was going to be the cover page, but now it’s going to be the frontispiece image,