I don’t dabble in the “fantasy” genre much, but some time ago I drew this fairy creature with butterfly wings writhing around as if her hands were bound.

From this I decided to make a painting sometime in early 2010.  I asked Sam to pose as it was going to be difficult to “fake” the arch of the back and the placement of the other hand and clavicles, etc.  She did it on one condition – that “certain areas” NOT be from her.  So a few key details were changed, including the face.   Her modelling was mainly used for bone structure, perspective, etc.   Below is the raw umber first wash after doing a smaller sketch to combine the real elements with “fantasy” and transferring the drawing to canvas.

As usual I didn’t think about the background until the painting was underway (which I really have to stop doing).  I started off with bedsheets fading into a purplish blackness.

The bedsheets weren’t working – so I painted over them.  Frustrated with the background I decided to start painting the flesh and come back to the background later.

Which of course included the face.  Since I’d modified the face from the model’s a lot things started to get a little dicey.  I spent a few days going back and forth from my drawing (which didn’t look bad in my opinion) to the canvas to see where it all went wrong.  Eventually I would end up tracing the face again and nearly starting over completely.

Plus, remember, faces always look freaky without eyebrows!  Those go on last.

I worked more on the skin and started putting in some hair.  Clearly brown, which I’d originally intended, was not going to gel with a dark red/purple background.  Something had to be done…

So I changed the hair to some sort of electric blond color.  Not quite realistic – but hey, this is sort of a “fantasy” genre painting anyway, right?  Below is a larger look at the “studio” (before the May remodelling).

And below is the finished piece on my terrible old flimsy easel (I bought a new one after this piece was finished).

Below is my attempt to photograph and color correct the painting for the web.  There is a luminance about the skin and the hair and wings that can’t really come through in a digital photograph.  Also – because of the size (4 feet high), whenever I photograph this the top (or farther end from the camera) starts to get washed out and/or reflective because I used a lot of medium in the background color.