EDIT (12/9): So I went ahead and did a sketch as a riff on thumbnail number 11 below. The story idea is that the evil king (pictured in the foreground, will be a character in dark evil looking armor) has been slain, but in the battle the angel has been fatally impaled with a sword. Now she sits on the king's throne dying, as the knight who loved her looks on... well something like that anyway! I'm not totally sure that the image makes much sense, and I know it doesn't exactly match up with the prompt. I still think that #1 down there is probably better, but what the heck, I'll put this here anyway.

Okay, so the original post is below.....

So I was initially very excited to tackle the "Angel of Sacrifice" assignment (and I still am!), but BOY have I been struggling mightily with this one. My main problem has been trying to fit three characters (attacker, angel, protected knight), each in distinct roles, into a single illustration that’s theoretically meant to be something that reads well on a tiny magic card, especially when one of them has huge flipping wings that cover take up tons of space and are constantly obscuring everything… ha!

I kind of can’t believe how many sketches I’ve made, because I can’t quite seem to find something that fully captures all of the narrative elements specified in the prompt. I tried ways to leave out either the knight or the attacker, but in each atempt I did not feel that the story was being conveyed for a variety of reasons in each one. If the prompt had simply been to depict an angel being fatally wounded in battle, that would’ve been a whole lot easier!  By the way, you can see that I didn't worry about character designs at all, I was just posing simple figures to try to get the composition right.

Right now I’m leaning toward number 1 or 2 (very slight variations). I refined that one the most trying to feel out how well it would work. I feel it’s the one that best captures the spirit of the prompt. Sure, the angel hasn’t yet been wounded, but my thinking is that she is flying in, unarmed, toward an armed attacker, so the threat is conveyed. And the sword character in front would be designed to look menacing and powerful. I also feel like the relationship between the angel and the knight (the angel is the protector of the knight) reads pretty well – that’s something that’s very tricky to achieve in many other compositions I tried. My one concern is that I’m not sure it would read well enough on a tiny Magic card.

To be honest, I actually really like the concept of number 11 as well, and I would have iterated on that a bit more -- the angel sits on a throne after a battle, impaled with a sword, with the knight sitting nearby clutching her leg. A slain baddie or two is laying around. Maybe I'd remove the baddie altogether to just paint the impaled angel on a throne with a knight lamenting her pending death. The angel gazes down at the knight. But yeah, I'd like to design a cool looking throne, and focus on the relationship between just two characters instead of three. But I got some feedback from people who said they don't think it conveys the story of the prompt (it's not clear that the angel is the protector of the knight) so I abandoned it. Maybe I've been fretting too much about conveying all the elements of a specific story, when something more abstract would do? What do you think?

Anyway, I’d love some feedback!