Sabriel Sketches

I'm in the middle of several illustrations, but I managed to sneak some sketches of Touchstone and Sabriel in preparation for my Picture Book Report project!
Sabriel of course is copyright Garth Nix.

So, Sabriel is supposed to be 18, with pale skin and black hair "fashionably bobbed". In most Sabriel illustrations, including the lovely cover, her hair is long, which always confused me a bit. She comes from a 1920's-ish world (and goes into a medievalish one), so I tried to reflect some of that in her hairstyle. She's strong and competent all-around (but with youthful naivete), so I always pictured her relatively pretty but not super-feminine.
Sabriel was pretty easy to get off the bat, but Touchstone was much harder...he ends up being her traveling companion from the Old Kingdom, and seems to be in his twenties. He is fairly serious and careworn and I had a tough time trying to make him look rough around the edges and not too pretty, but still a handsome young man. (Sam Worthington ended up being one of my references) I'm kind of proud of his hair. It's tough to make "short tightly curled hair" look good and not look like this...

...so I think I did okay. :) (sorry Justin, you look much better now!)