The Design Process - Jungle Illustration

I know I haven't posted in awhile, but hopefully this one will be fun and show you some of my design process as I work on a project for a client. Below is the different phases I went through when creating a wrap around cover for a children's magazine.

This first sketch is the one I created for this "Jungle" themed cover:

The clients liked this cover but had a few suggestions. They had changed their masthead so I needed to adjust the image to better fit the text. They also wanted the girl to be younger and for me to add in some additional animals other than just monkeys. So I did this sketch:

I feel like this was the strongest sketch for this project. But for some unknown reason the client decided they wanted to completely change the front cover image. Instead of having a girl swinging through the jungle they wanted a girl sitting on a branch drawing the animals. They also asked me to change her ethnicity. So I created this sketch:

This is the sketch we moved forward with. Below is a quick color study I did in Photoshop:

The client asked me to lighten up some of the background colors and we moved forward to the final painting. Here it is:

This cover will be on Newsstands in the summer. Look for it!