Sword & the Elf Princess book cover

Hi all

Hopefully everyone is getting ready for a nice holiday break as the year winds up and another one gets ready to begin. My Etsy shop while still up, I will not be posting anything out until the new year. The post office is manic and I don't have time.

I thought I'd share some new art and maybe some process behind the art for my latest cover, The Sword and the Elf Princess. This is number 5 of the books I've painted for Frances Smith, though this is a series of short stories set in the same universe.

Some thumbnail sketches with a final showing where the text would go, because this was already fairly well established. The brief was an elf maiden with silver hair and Michael's brother kissing or touching faces, or something fairly romantic. One of the challenges is that one of the main characters from the previous books has white hair, is not an elf, but I needed to try and make them look different enough.

The lineart, including some changes the client requested like moving the biers, and adding a cloak. We decided on putting her hair down even though in an Ancient Roman setting this would have been a bit taboo! Not even a head scarf! Makes sense where it is in the story, plus fantasy! She's an elf!

The colour sample we ended up going with, though the client wanted a bit more warmth in the characters as was shown in another concept

The final cover

And with the text added!