Serpents Circling A Feather: The Missing Worlds

I've been rereading a wonderful fanfiction of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, called The Missing Worlds. In one scene, a group of underwater serpents guard a magical glowing feather. I felt inspired to try to draw it.

I went based on this description: "They were serpents, or something like it; as they got closer Syaoran could make out undulating, smooth bodies with hides that reflected the light like an oil slick. Their mouths were full of needle-sharp teeth and their eyes glowed a smoky red, smoldering coals of rage and hate that strained against the water."
(The Missing Worlds, Chapter 4: Water World III)

I decided to represent the serpents with a simple Celtic knot. Here is a wonderful tutorial for making knots like this.

I started by drawing a circle using an upside-down tea bag holder thing, since that's what was around. Then I freehandedly drew a circle about a centimeter smaller inside the first one.

After that, I made little boxes like the tutorial says.

I drew "X"es from corner to corner within each box. It's easier for me to start like this, then from there make the doubled lines like the tutorial says.

I went ahead and outlined my circles in marker at this stage, because with so many pencil marks so close together, my brain can get a bit confused sometimes.

Then I experimented on how to draw the serpents' heads. In traditional Celtic knotwork, people sometimes draw beasts' heads "eating" the ends of the knot -- which usually turns out to be their own tails! So I sketched out some ideas for how that might work in my knot.

With that figured out, I went and penciled in my knot, then added four serpent heads, roughly equidistant to one another.

With all that in place, I  markered in the design and erased the pencil marks. I love seeing how a knot looks after all the foundation stuff is erased away! It looks so much cleaner (even if I can still sometimes see a ghost of the pencil marks 'cause I pushed the pencil too hard), and it's much easier for my brain.

Then I started coloring it in. I decided to use a slightly different shade of gray for each serpent. I don't know if it shows up on a computer screen, but I like adding little details like that. Gives it a little bit more depth, I think.

After that I remembered that I wanted to draw a plain border around each side of the circle. Makes it look a little neater. I decided to color these borders in a lighter shade of blue than the background of the knot. The serpents are supposed to be in a sort of whirlpool, and I wanted to represent that.

Then I drew the feather, and I did a slightly-simplified version of the original design. In the anime, the design is dark pink, but in the fanfiction, it's described as black, so I did that instead. (The original manga doesn't explicitly say what color the design is.)

I drew whirlpool-like strokes of a lighter blue around the feather. I used a dying marker, which let me gradiate by changing how hard I pushed down on the marker. The feather glows brightly, so I made the water near it lighter.

Then came my favorite part: the gilding! I don't have any real gold paint or anything fancy like that, but I do have a sparkly gold-colored brush-marker. I outlined the feather in it, added dots in the inner circle to represent its radiating light, and covered the serpents with it to match the "oil slick" description.

The brush-marker doesn't completely cover the original color. It just adds a gold tint and sparkles. The funny thing is, when I first got the marker, I was disappointed that it wasn't opaque. I wanted a marker that looked like the gold paint in old illuminated manuscripts. But now, it works perfectly for this piece!