Nausicaä and Kest

About a year ago, I first reached out to Xulia unprompted to see if she’d be willing to do a Nausicaä piece for me.
I’ve been a fan of her work ever since I first read her ‘I see a knight’ with Shortbox, one of the few graphic novels that’s on permanent display in my limited bookshelf space. Moreover, I knew she had done plenty of Nausicaä and Miyazaki-themed drawings and commissions, including one posted to this website that made me a bit jealous every time I came across it, so I randomly reached out to her. Luckily for me, she was willing to take it on!
After some back and forth we agreed on a watercolour piece, she mainly works digitally nowadays I believe, and I sent over some images of the manga to serve as a kind of mood board. They mainly featured Nausicaä with Kai, geared up for battle, together with Kest or just sitting all alone. The idea being she’s often forced into unpleasant situations she would rather avoid (combat) or shows a more contemplative, lonely side of her than the cheery face she often feels the need to put on in public.
The initial plan was for it to be done a bit sooner, but I stressed from the start there was no set deadline, so I didn’t mind when Xulia was forthright about a delay as she was busy with her SBCF entry ‘Clair de Lune’ (go read it, it’s really good!) followed by the disastrous floods in her region, Valencia.
She recently got back to it though and sent me the two prelims to choose from you can see in the additional images. I think it’s pretty clear which one I preferred and went with, even though most people whose opinion I asked actually felt stronger about the other one. What do you guys think?
Anyway, she sent me a scan of the final result last week, achieving everything promised in the prelim and then some, and it already arrived in the mail today without a hitch, with some nice prints added as a surprise bonus too. Exceptional work!
Din A4