Tug of War Sketches

I'm currently working on three illustrations for a story called Tug of War for the Core Knowledge Reading Program.

Its kinda a cute story. Turtle, who wants to be friends with Hippo and Elephant, talks them into a game of tug-of-war to prove his strength and equality with them. He tells Hippo to take one end of the vine and he wanders into the jungle to get the other end. Instead, he gives the other end to Elephant. Both Elephant and Hippo think they are tugging against Turtle, who is in fact, sitting at the middle of the vine eating his lunch and taking a nap. When he wakes up he cuts the vine, tricking Elephant and Hippo into thinking they lost the game and that Turtle is not so puny after all. Devious little Turtle.

Here are my sketches. The finals are sitting on my kitchen table, mostly done. They're due this Thursday so sometime in the next few days I'll post them. I thought it might be cool to see how I get from point A to point B.

My soon-to-be Intellectual Property Attorney husband would like to remind everyone that this is copyrighted material that can not be reproduced without my permission.