PAINTING "THE SERPENT'S SHADOW"

I turned in a painting for a new novel by Mercedes Lackey in August 2001, called "The Serpent's Shadow". It was still being written as I painted so I called the author for more information, and found that she had taken the premise of the fairy tale of "Snow White" and spun off her own very imaginative version, which takes place in an alternate Edwardian England with secret sorcerous societies, and that the main character would be a beautiful young half-Indian woman doctor. The doctor was being sought by an evil Hindu priestess who was also her Aunt, and was being protected by 7 magical animal spirits. The chapters I read were quite thrilling and I was eager to do the illustration.

I decided this was an excellent opportunity to do a portrait style cover, especially since no incidents were written yet that lent themselves to depiction – well, that's the publishing business! The snake form would be very graphic instead of realistic, and I would make the background like those beautiful Indian sari fabrics. There was some trouble finding pictures of all the exotic indian animals, and reference books started piling high around me. I needed photos of peacocks, hanuman langurs, ringnecked parakeets, indian mongooses, eurasian eagle-owls, saker falcons, and of course, cobras! In the first sketch she had a stethoscope to represent her profession but the publishers said it made her look like a veterinarian, and I had to laugh and agree! More "Magic" was also recommended, so I almost went to the old standby of glowing animal eyes, but finally chose to give each animal eye colors not possible in nature, and have each animal reacting more sentiently toward the main character or toward the entwining menace of the black cobra. Those are passionflower vines behind her, which grows in her greenhouse in London. The apple, of course, represents her origins in "Snow White", while the langur puts a cautionary and protective hand on hers. There is a fabulous illustrator by the name of Braldt Braldts, who does the most wonderful animals, and I tried to think of his work when I was painting these.