2nd image- last developments and final

The images relates to this part of text 'Said the servant: "Do not be grieved. You have many large dogs, so what you must do is burn twelve of them and send their ashes to your future wife. She'll never know. And after you are married, even if she learns the truth nothing will happen to your sons." 
And that was just what the lord did. He killed and burnt twelve dogs.'  
I couldn't fit twelve dogs onto the image as this would be too crowded. So I deciding to symbolise the burning of them through the smoke fire was a way in which it could shown sentivly but still have impact. The image of the smoking dogs by its self( screen shot below) would work or somthing along the similar lines , for the book cover.

Keeping the cover to one or maixum of 3 colours would work really well. On a plain background. foiling could be woven into the design gold or maybe sliver? 

The composition of the final image , overall I am happy with. it took a lot of building and changing ideas to fit the different elements in. This is probely the furthest away I have gone from thinking of an image in print terms. The last image with the ravens had a lot more white space and looks like a print. Where as this image does look  digitally based. Im not so sure that I prefer it , I like it when an image involoves the white space as it feels like it allows the elements of the image to breath. 

This image is one of the most compilicated , compositionally that I have done , and I think that it has worked out okay. Again though it is hard to get the print textres equal and even across the whole image. It's difficult to estimate this on the computer so only really shows when printed. I need to find a different way of adding the textures over the image so it is even.  

The images narrtive however I think is strong. Placing the dogs in the smoke was a good idea and having the boys watching from above in the foreground , add and addition to the story that is already being told.  (Final development images below.)