designing a diary cover
 

I don't post here often but I know there are some clued up kids on arting and what have you so I was hoping for some advice. I'm making a cover for a diary as a kind of project, its a gift for someone as part of just customising it for them. Only i'm having trouble with the shading, since I only ever doodle and rarely use the computer. This is the sketch I started out with:



and with a bit of computing jiggery buggery:



After some trial and error, trying out a bit of shading:



Hopefully you can see what I'm going for here. I'm still not happy with it though. I know what I want, I just don't have the skills to put it to paper. With some direction though it'd be great to see this make the print, so if anyone has any ideas or crits or anything throw them my way, its 4 days overdue already!

Sorry, it's bugging me.

I think that more detailed shading might take away from the simplified style you've got going (that's just opinion, though).

The only actual criticism I might think of is that the composition is static. Unfortunately, I can't help you with that, because my composition sucks.

Are you going to add in the rest of the stuff? Right now it seems a little heavy on the right.