Update on Ch-ILL (Children's Illustration Class)

Hello, friends! Thanks for coming by to see me! My posting has gone way down, and is likely to stay that way! I wanted to give an update on my foray into illustrating children's books.
This painting (sorry about the nasty photo - I'll try to scan it soon) is for an assignment in the class I'm taking. We were to illustrate some spreads from Margaret Wise Brown's "Bunny's Noisy Book." I was wrong about the published sample we saw, it wasn't Garth Williams, it is more recent version with illustrations by Lisa McCue. Anyhow, my version uses very graphic, active typesetting that mimics the text. I tried to put the text over my painting in Illustrator here so you can see what I mean. Anyhow, this assignment was supposed to by done in colored pencil, but I HATED it! I couldn't get the rich colors I was imagining. So I used acrylic paint with colored pencil for the details. I'd do it again on a smoother surface, the canvas board I used really stunk for the detailing. Live and learn!
This second picture is of this week's assignment. We had a choice to illustrate some text from "Treasure Island", or from a picture book about salmon. I chose the spread from "Treasure Island," and made some thumbnails, and decided on this layout. The boy is saying goodbye to his mother at the old inn where he grew up and is heading off to get on a ship. There is not any detail about his mother or the inn, except that it is in a cove and set in England in the early 1700s, so it is pretty open to interpretation. This illustration is going to be a challenge for me because A) it is of PEOPLE and B)it is supposed to be done in watercolor, which I've never done. CARPE DIEM!