New Illustration: Völva (Before & After)

No... "völva"... with an umlautted "o" (not a "u") - a Norse shaman/seeress. It's an NPC character class I'm working on for issue #2 of The Dragon Horde zine. I was really looking for an old public domain illustration from the lat 1800s or early 1900s that would fit the bill, but to no avail. In lieu of that option, I decided to do my own. My first stab (bottom) was really an attempt to start using my brush pen again. While I like the line quality, it just didn't have the visual punch I wanted (and felt a little to "new school" for what I wanted visually, especially the punkish haircut). So I took another stab, attempting to give it that woodcut inspired look with which I've had some success (see my Bartleby illustration for reference). The new illustration makes her look older, but that's intentional. The further I got into the development of the class, I realized making her a tad older made more sense (and was more in line with the traditional image of a völva).

AFTER...


BEFORE...