Ichi=one=1

Today I started to play around with how to show nmbers in my series of pictures illustrating Japanese words. The image below is a early go at ichi, number one:and below is ni, number two:

I was going to add another character until I had a wee crowd. I wasn't really happy with this approach, it didnt feel like the most interesting way for me to go, or the most challenging. After an afternoon of playing around a finally settled on another picture of a whale (my new favourite thing to draw). With each image another fish, or maybe sea creature will be added. I will try and show the whale in different positions in each one to give the series abit of range, it will be hard though while keeping the image this cramped, I don't want to zoom out too much or the inside of the whales tummy and its contents will be too small. Im happy with this picture, and am hopeful that the number series will come out okay.