Hello everybody and thanks for taking a look at this.
Here's a portrait of a friend named Kimberley I finished recently. I wanted to portray her beauty and personality in an environment that's slightly magical and full of life, the same time trying to avoid making the scene too busy. The original inspiration came from Hayao Miyazaki’s film “Princess Mononoke”: a lush magical forest, small creatures, golden light. Initially I wanted to have a lot more magical qualities to it, but then I thought I’m better off just suggesting this and concentrating on the character.
The painting was done in Photoshop CS except for masks for the small three-leafed plants which were done in 3dsmax. I used a lot of custom brushes, mainly one texture I overuse regularly, and references taken by myself (character and environment) and ones found from the internet (exotic creatures). Loads of different things - plants, flowers, various small creatures – visited the scene at different stages of the process but eventually I needed to shortlist them to my absolute favourites to balance the scene. The painting took about 40-60 hours to complete, span across the time of two months.
Hope you like it and find it beautiful. Any thoughts on the painting most welcome: critics, suggestions, comments, etc.
