As many of you know, I was recently added to the roster of fantasy/fairy artists involved in the ever growing Enchanted Visions Project. Check out my Nov. 17th blog entry for more details on the project. I finished my first contribution to the project and submitted it at the beginning of December. They usually have a theme that is a word or phrase to inspire the artists to come up with something based upon that theme, but this time they tried something new. We were given three stock photos from lisajen-stock.deviantart.com and could choose one (or more) to use as inspiration. When I looked through them, this one caught my eye. I thought,
"That model really likes that dress she's wearing!" How would I know that? Well, my daughter Brittany got married a couple of years ago, and I recall chatting with the sales lady while she was trying on dresses. She told me that you can always tell when it's "the" dress, because they look at themselves, and they smooth the dress down over and over with their hands, I watched the brides, and she was right, the dresses they didn't like, they didn't even touch with their hands hardly at all, the more they liked the dress, there would go the hands! So this photo made me think of that day. I decided that she would be a fairy in a really lovely dress, a new dress fit for a queen. So I thought, why not make her Queen Tatiana from Midsummer Night's Dream?!
I had never worked from a stock photo before, so that was kind of a fun new world for me. I usually take my own reference photos, but it really was neat seeing all of the wonderful photography lisajen had there for the plucking! She asks for the artist to give her a credit line (fair enough) and of course a link back to her deviant art site where her photography is posted. That's all I ask from people who want to use my artwork for their websites, so it seemed very fair to me.
I opted to reverse the image in Photoshop to begin, I gave her very platinum blonde hair, and imagined a dress and crown fit for a fairy queen. This was a really fun project, I really enjoyed it, and I'm happy with the outcome. I have her posted in my Etsy store as prints, and watch for her to be added to Crystal Art Pendants, compact mirrors, coffee mugs and more!
Glad to be back in the blog!
Blessings for a wonderful New Year, and watch for a new Magical Monday Movie Post, next Monday!
~Mickie
