What do you want this Founder's portrait art to look like? Please list the physical description, Action & Magic, Clothing, Accessories, and Background that you would like to see for Merinita's portrait.
She is described in HoH:MC as having white hair and green clothes. Which is not much of a physical description, but possibly all we have.
I am thinking she should have a youthful face, despite the white hair signifying age.
She should be depicted with the great stag she bound as a familiar - the very first familiar of any hermetic mage.
There are some suggestions throughout the books that Merinita may have been one of the last remaining priestesses of the Cult of Diana. If so, perhaps she should be shown with one or more of the symbols of Diana?
Agreed that we want to have something broadly in line with the cover picture, and to include her familiar. I'd also be tempted to include a reference to Quendalon in the picture - yes, he's not the founder, but in practice he's more responsible for the current status of the House.
Something like:
An elderly woman stands just within a forest boundary at the side of a path leaving it. She is dressed in a green dress and russet cloak - the overall effect is (reasonably) practical for forest living yet makes her look like a wise elder. Her hand rests on the flank of a great white stag that stands alongside her. In the foreground of the picture, the path splits.
To one side in the background, almost hidden in the trees, another man is gazing upon where the path splits in front of Merinita. He is a tall thin man with pale skin and golden blond hair and strange ruby eyes. He wears a mantle in a patchwork of six colours in the Irish fashion. At his shoulder stands a Faerie Queen with a woodland motif - her crown is of wood, her clothing all of green, her overall vibe one of ambition, power and secret mystical knowledge.
[Strictly speaking Quendalon wouldn't have had ruby eyes when Merinita was around, given he only got them after his sojourn in the Bohemian woods during his disappearance after her death, but they're his most distinguishing feature so I've included them. As he's of Irish descent and was raised among the Fae I've tried to give him characteristics of Sidhe blood. Try to avoid making him look like a vampire.]
My initial thought when seeing this thread was that Quendalon should be in Merinita's portrait, in some strange or ominous way that forecasts his later role in defining the House.
I did like the Merinita illustration in 5e, but do wonder whether it made her look a bit too run down she is quite old, but more vitality than the previous drawings might be nice...
I like that, but I was wondering if there was any way to just hint at Quendalon's fate in there, without making his eyes ruby yet - at least not literally. I thought maybe he could be holding something with a strange scarlet glow to it on one of his hands, palm up. It could be, well, two pieces of ruby, or some fey creature, or a spell. The thing is: the glow engulfs his upper body and causes his eyes to reflect with bright, sinister red.
Hmm. Maybe his eyes are normal (at least for some variety of normal from someone who already had faerie blood), but the faerie queen behind him is holding two rubies in the palm of her hand?