The prompt wasn’t really inspiring me, so I took a few liberties and expanded my brainstorming to be a nature-themed character in general. She’s not really an ‘elemental guardian’, more of a Druid from DnD, but I wanted to share the (very convoluted) process I went through. 

this took about 12 hours of drawing from start to finish, not counting research and reference gathering.

in case my handwriting is illegible, from left to right, top to bottom, it reads:

1. Very rough sketch, 2. Cleaner sketch, 3. Color and line art, 4. Better sketch, 5. Change design during line art, 6. Color thumbnails, 7. Flat color drawing.