WIP - Marianne and Elinor

I don't usually post WIPs (work in progress) on this blog, because they feel like spoilers to me. But here's an exception.

This piece is for the upcoming Ladies of Literature Volume II anthology, a collaborative art book with the theme of female characters in literature and female authors. The organizers (Arielle Jovellanos and Janet Sung) are planning to run a Kickstarter for the book in February, and I can't post the finished illustration until then. I'm going to have busy winter so I'm getting started on this early. By February you'll have forgotten about this WIP, so I'm ok with posting it now.

I chose to depict Marianne and Elinor Dashwood from Sense & Sensibility because I liked the idea of illustrating their contrasting personalities. Technically I'm only supposed to draw one main character, and the other has to be more of a supporting character. So I'm focusing on Marianne because she's always upstaging her sister anyway.

Deciding on a color scheme is proving to be a challenge for this illustration, because I want the whole thing to have a cool English foggy tone, but I also want Marianne to be very colorful. Conundrum!

Are the open and closed books too obvious a metaphor? Definitely.