Sketches for book dummy

I have been working feverishly to finish my book dummy. For me, this required skipping meals, sleep and drinking copious quantities of coffee. I am hoping that I will be rewarded for my efforts. Most of the pieces in this post are what I call digital sketches. They are NOT finished works. I have blocked in the main elements and characters, subject to change, but it does not have the finished textures or finishing touches. It is my chance to "play" and try out different things. Everything is subject to change.

Since I am fairly new to Adobe illustrator, I am playing with some of the features. In the one overview class for the Adobe Creative Suite that I took last summer, the instructor told us that you never want to add the same effect twice, only edit the effect to get the look that you desire. I found an exception. I find that in creating foliage, I get quite pleasant effects by adding multiple instances of the same effect that you can't get by editing.

I removed the text from all of the images since it wouldn't make sense. This might have left some funky areas in the images.   You will see that in one of the sketches the dog is a different color.  I have tried 3 colors now and the one dog that is different is from a previous coloration.  One of the pages shown only has the sketch on the right hand page.  On the left, I've only started working by blocking out some of the background.