The final illustration! It came out like a book cover or TV series poster, which was one of my goals.

Rough Thumbnails for the first ideas I had. There were things I liked, like some of the color palettes and cloud lady, but they didn't feel like a group...

The Second pass, this time I thought of how they were a group. What if they were elemental guardians of nature? What if they were sisters? With that in mind I developed these ideas...

The final looks, I wanted them to feel apart of each of their respected elements. Land became a dryad girl, Sea was a mash-up of several deep sea creatures, and Air became a literal cloud lady.

While designing the thumbnail and finalizing the colors, I decided to make a line up. This was to have a sense of scale for when they are all next to each other.

Some of the best ideas come with good ol' pencil and paper. These turned into the final color palettes for each sister and this shows the names I decided for each one. We've got Mare the sea guardian, Caeli the Air guardian, and Terra the Land guardian

A rough thumbnail for the final illustration

Drawn and shaded in Procreate, to block out the values and maintain clarity easier.