Struggling with the White Queen

I've been working on a gift illustration for a while now. Who ever knew it would take three tries to get a satisfactory result? The images above are the first two tries.

These illustrations I did didn't really come out the way I wanted due to various reasons, like stickers not being ink-resistant, too dark colours, just being plain unable to draw what I wanted... I did try fixing my mistakes but in the end I didn't like these two, and I don't want to give away works I'm not happy with. It's against my policy, because I'd feel so cheap.

 This is the very first illustration I ever did of the White Queen, from last summer. Since the other ones didn't work out, I took up this for hints and decided to give it one more try. The third and final illustration is based upon this little painting's design of the Queen.

Watercolours didn't work for the other two, and I wanted to try something else. I ended up on markers - on the left is the inked lineart and on the right what I've coloured so far. I scanned the lines and printed on another paper so that I could start over in case I make a mess again. So far so good, I think. I usually start with the skin first when I colour with markers because it's the best part.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for a good result at last, shall we?