Athena's Wellspring book cover

I love working with authors, particularly character driven covers. This piece was painted where the focus is on the 3 young women, who are warriors/ knights, share the same white breastplate with an owl insignia, but each are very unique in their looks and weapons.

I wanted the characters to be in focus, so deliberately painted the background in a looser style. There is definitely a triangular sense to the composition. With three characters on the cover, they each need to feel equally important. There was no leader indicated by the author (though there may be in the book), but I did have a favourite given I love purple ;)

I also wanted to make the armour in some way believable, while still having a fantasy element. I decided to keep the legs and arms fairly light in armour, though toughened leather or fabric would form some protection. Given they use weapons such as a staff, tonfa and a rapier, they needed to be able to move around so I designed a lighter looking armour. While none are in fighting poses, I wanted them to seem like they could spring into action at any stage.

The other important thing for me as an artist, was capturing the diversity of the characters. Yes they are all young, fit and able, (Ines should probably be more muscular than I painted her), the author was very specific about their skin tone. When I worked through the colour concepts I was able to keep Ines and Sophie fairly neutral, but I did provide a medium and a much darker skin tone for Serena.