Illustration updates

I have two illustrations in progress: hounds scaling a cave wall, and a firefly-like swarm with humanoid figures inside each light. Below is the reference work, rejected drafts, and the reasoning behind each choice (so far).

Hounds

The first I started last year but have put aside:

This is the scene in the book:

The creatures crossed the giant room in a few gigantic bounds, and leapt onto the wall, red tongues lolling out of panting mouths filled with sharp, snapping teeth. They were canines, bigger than the largest wolves but with the energy of rabid dogs, crazed in the pursuit of a kill.

The protagonist is being pursued by two hounds. I wanted to portray a couple things with this illustration:

●     Showing how scary being pursued by these animals would be

●     The hounds’ almost supernatural speed and strength in scaling a near vertical wall

This was my initial Pinterest board for this illustration:

Here are a few sketches of scary dog faces:

I didn’t go with anything this detailed in part because I wanted a wider view showing the hounds on the wall, and partially because this is leaning into maybe slightly too scary.

To accomplish the second goal, I used a reference of Irish wolfhounds and turned it almost 90°:

The one thing I am not sure about is the colours. I may restart with a different colour palette for the cave walls. I seem to really struggle with colouring stone; I want vibrant colours in all my illustrations but I tend to go a bit too far.

Fireflies

Another one I am working on so far looks like this:

This image is intended to depict this:

June bent and peered into the illuminated cloud, focusing her eyes and ears. She could see, now that she was really looking, that only part of the creatures were illuminated. They were larger than she thought, and less insect-like. In fact, they had the figures of tiny people, men and women, with brightly glowing chests, as if light was emanating from their very hearts.

Here is my pinterest board for this illustration:

The glowing points of light will have little guys in each of them. The composition is also going to have some grasses or clover in the bottom half. I’m going to use a green over the vibrant red and use a light green gel pen to show highlighted areas so the grasses/clover will be mostly just dark silhouettes, but hopefully will appear to glow where the light is cast onto it. I chose the reddish/orangish colours scheme to change it up; it’s not a colour scheme I’ve used for one of these illustrations before.

I originally thought about using human references of dancers for the little glowing guys, but trying it out it seemed extremely cheesy and posed. (I also really hate the purple/gold colour scheme.)

These two bring me to seven of twelve planned illustrations. Writing is mostly behind me now as I'm deep into editing, so illustration is where most of my creative energy is going for a while. Expect more frequent updates as I work through the rest of the list :)