Creating the art for Cat Hellisen’s story, “Mother, Crone, Maiden”, was a bit of a challenge. Full of intense, risky visuals, it proved rather difficult to choose some over others. It took one or two days just to come up with thumbnails, a process that normally takes a few hours.

Number 1 shows three versions of Ilven standing on a cliff. Each is colored according to the stones her mother explains at the beginning of the story. It may have been too much of a spoiler.

Number 2 also shows us three Ilvens, each representing different paths, but this time tripping in the study. 

Number 3 is Ilven submerged in water provoked by tears representing her visions.

Number 4 has streams flowing out of Ilven’s eyes, enveloping her in the study.

With these options, Irene and I decided to take the trippy route and go with number 4.

And then I went seriously overboard with the inks. Painting this was more of an excavation process than anything else.

After hours of lasso tooling this into shape, this is what emerged.

This process post originally appeared on Goni Montes’ site.

Goni Montes was born and raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Shortly after studying fine arts at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, he began his career as a scientific illustrator. You can see a gallery of his work here on Tor.com.