Snow maiden

Dino Coltro, who sadly passed away last year, was a writer, poet and scholar of traditions of north-eastern Italy (link here in italian). Incidentally, his love for local traditions dated back to many decades ago, and was completely devoid of any discriminatory or racist attitude, which is (sadly) worth noting nowadays in northern Italy.

Anyway, I've recently read a book of his about some creatures in popular myth, and I decided to imagine and draw some of these strange and funny characters (in case you ask, the title is Gnomi, anguane e basilischi).
The first character I propose, la fanciulla delle nevi (snow maiden), is actually not so strange, but quite poetic. Snow maidens are fairies living in the mountains, guarding and protecting the glaciers and the snow summits. Sometimes they come down and help men to move their flock or herd:

here is a kind of character study (I hope they don't look too much like "models"):

You may have noticed that snow is almost missing in my drawings... yes, that's right, but these are simple preliminary sketches... :)