The Savior’s Sister by Jenna Moreci is the second novel in The Savior’s Series and the companion novel to The Savior’s Champion. Check out the synopsis on Goodreads or read the free preview to find out more.
Release day: September 29, 2020
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To celebrate the novel’s upcoming release, I’m holding a character symbols tournament biweekly through to late September, right before book launch. Vote for your favourite character symbols in all of the sketch rounds, and the two most voted symbols from each round will go on to the revision round to become fully realized pieces of art.
Week of July 12: Competitors round 1 of 2
Week of July 26: Competitors round 2 of 2
Week of August 9: Leila, Naomi, and the Sisters
Week of August 23: Brontes and the Senators (note that I won’t be doing ALL of them)
Week of September 6: Misc. Palace Staff
Week of September 20: Top 10 designs revision round part 1 of 2
Week of September 27: Top 10 designs revision round part 2 of 2
Finale Part 1 of 2
Winning Competitor Design #1
Drake, The Dragon
I’m not at all surprised that The Dragon from Round 1 was the crowd favourite. I knew as soon as I started sketching that tattoo design that this would be a crowd-pleaser!
Drake is one of the competitors of the Sovereign’s Tournament, and one of the Sovereign’s blessed three. He has striking blue eyes and a dragon tattoo that he believes will always protect him from harm. He thinks he’s invincible! I guess that’s a good trait in an assassin…
For Drake I designed a black ink dragon design inspired by tribal tattoos. I made a couple tweaks since the sketch, but honestly the design was pretty solid to begin with, so not a lot has changed.
Winning Competitor Design #2
Enzo, The Dog
Second place from Round 1 was harder to determine, but I saw a lot of votes for The Dog, and I quite like this character, so I went with it.
The dog head is pretty close to the original sketch design. I decided to put this on a rainbow watercolour gradient background, and then actually painted the dog in mostly because the other piece I did on the same piece of paper was a black silhouette on a gradient background and it was feeling quite same-y.
I went with a rainbow gradient for the background because, as we already know from The Savior’s Champion, Enzo prefers the company of men. Gay pride, baby! I like the way the transition from yellow to green lined up with the empty eye, because it almost looks like that is the dog’s eye. What do you think?
Winning Competitor Design #3
Bjorne, The Bear
This one surprised me if I’m being honest. I didn’t think the simple little bear silhouette would be a favourite in Round 2, but it was! I think the piece was surprised too because it seemed determined not to happen. First I tried to do the salt sprinkling for texture trick, and that really didn’t work. Then when I was peeling masking tape off it lifted the lower-left corner entirely! I do like the effect of the sloping lower edge it created, but gosh darn it I hadn’t photographed or scanned it yet and it was already damaged!
Bjorne is a joy to read when he comes up in the books. He’s big and lumbering, like his laurel, and not much bothers him. This is the guy who managed to sleep through the “stay calm” challenge where the competitors are physically tortured one-by-one in a circle while the others watch. You can’t stay calmer than that!
I drew the finale bear based on the sketch I did weeks ago, but I changed it a little. I wanted it to feel a little more organic, so I made one front paw raised mid-stride rather than having all four paws on the ground.
Winning Competitor Design #4
Flynn, The Prince
The other winner from Round 2 was much less surprising to me. Flynn, otherwise known as The Prince, is Tobias’ ally for most of the tournament (and a thorn in Leila’s side.) He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips. Or whatever the equivalent to that would be in Thessen!
You guys loved this crown design in particular, even though I incorporated crowns into many of the proposed designs throughout the tournament. I do believe this was the only one I did that was just a crown, though. I turned up the glitz on this bejewelled crown illustration using my Winsor & Newton gold ink.
Winning Senator Design #1
Wembleton, Tournament MC
By far the most popular design in Round 4: Brontes & Senators was the wolf I drew to represent Senator Wembleton, the Master of Ceremonies during the Tournament and public spokesperson for the palace.
He’s the sort of warm and jolly-looking old man who most foolishly overlook. He knows more than he’s supposed to, and he likes it that way. He takes pride and joy in his level of power and does seem to see himself as a leader of sorts. Perhaps he’s not the alpha he thinks he is, though, as his self-preservation instinct overrides duty.
Coming Up in Part 2…
Next week I will unveil the final coloured illustrations for the remaining design winners.
The other popular vote from Round 4: Brontes & Senators was nearly tied between Hylas (domestic cat looking into the eyes of a lion) and Erebus (sword & shield.) I’ve started work on Hylas but I’m not overly pleased with where it’s going, so I may do Erebus instead.
From Round 3: Leila, Naomi & Sisters the winning votes were Naomi and Pippa, and I can’t wait to do those! Naomi’s in particular.
From Round 5: Misc. Palace Staff the winning votes were Talos and Asher.
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