Here is the finished cartoon, now let's go back and see how it came about.
The brief for this one was '...dog and owner scaling rock wall together in crapons/all the gear, roped to each other.'
Here'a quick sketch I did of the brief on the train.
Initially I thought about keeping the drawing in portrait layout, but then decided to switch to landscape so as to include more of the background. I alsl thought that the dark rock face running down one third of the picture would be very striking.
I did a tracing of the initial sketch and kept the poses of the two characters more or less the same.
I've started colouring the rock face using the water colout brush.
Using the same brush I'm now adding colour to the climbers.
I've now finished the draft. I thought I would give the impression of a forest in the vallet below them by using the brush again.
The tones on the climber and dog are a little flat at this point, particularly with the man as his jacket colour is very similar to the mountain range in the background, and so he tends to blend in a bit.
I then darkened the rock face, and increased the tones on the rock climber and dog to make them 'pop' out of the picture more.
The only extra thing I might try at this point would be to add a few thicker lines.