The Heral Horn Amulet

As part of my cover design process for The Legacy Incarnate, I include a small graphic on the spine of the hard copy of the book. I created artwork based off of Sabra's trinket in the Legacy Incarnate, the heral horn amulet, that will be featured on the spine of Book IV of The Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Key.

Heral horn amulet, representing Sabra's first mentor in magic, Eveningstar.

I had drawn Sabra's heral horn amulet a long time ago in one of my sketchbooks, but I decided to draw it again, partially because I didn't want to dig it out of my art stuff. Lazy, I know. I drew some concepts in a newer sketch book, and then did a digital piece. I think the digital piece turned out the best and is featured above. The first 3 steps were done in Krita, and I did the final step in GIMP.

I wasn't going for absolute realism with the amulet. I wanted to go for stylized and detail, showing both an originality to the character who created it, Sabra, and the love she has for whom the amulet represents.

I included a few steps in the picture above. The third step is actually the finished version, and the last is the cover art version, in stark black and white.

This amulet is 2-3 inches long, and in the story, it took Sabra about a year to carve using both carving tools and magic. It took her a while longer to get the stone set into the carving's claws.

The images included on the spines of LI thus far.

Another piece I want to share is a rough illustration of a scene I've written and that I plan to add to the revision of Book 3 of The Legend of Draconite: E'lsra. The insert explores Sabra's first time casting a spell outside of her incarnated experience as Luna. Of course, she goes directly to Eveningstar, the same lizardman depicted as the amulet above, to tutor her. I'm excited to work on the revision of E'lsra; there's so much to add and explore that wasn't in the original manuscript. 

Also done in Krita.