My Neighbor Boletus

A little (my children right now claim a lot of my free time) homage to the upcoming autumn and one of my favorite movies from one of my favorite film-makers, the -sadly- retired Hayao Myiazaki.

 

The Goddess of Sun

A little portrait in honor of the sunny, bright, and adorable daughter of some friends of ours.

Painted from scratch in PS, using a photo as reference.

Published with permission.

Into The Forest (selfportrait)

My boyfriend and my older son don't like this painting, saying it makes me ugly.
My 1-year old, instead, recognized me at once.
I must say, I've got a strong feeling of freedom while painting myself as a forest troll, surrounded by (some) of the creatures I meet daily. The art world is filled with pretty girls, so let´s go and fill the room of the ugly ones, instead!

painted in PS from scratch, as usual. (and based on a picture my 5-years old took of me, wearing a fake troll nose )

Woman with Meconopsis

Simple portrait practice, in PS, 1-2 hours max. I need desperately practice again, since during holidays I couldn't use my Wacom. Maybe I'll do something more advanced lately with this reference.
Referenced from this beautiful picture at DeviantArt.
I didn't look for a photorealistic style, just keep it as it was a pencil/ink drawing, to experiment a new style. Used round brush, kept very elliptic.

It's you the Little One

Well, who's saying that? The Little and curious Wild Boy going around so fearless (and always with a stone in his hand), or the Little Flower Fairy staring at this stranger?

Like Alexander the Little, this painting was commissioned by my mother-in-law because she wants a fantasy portrait of my second born, too. As for the first, also this time I really tried to do my very best. Nevertheless, I feel quite disappointed when I realized that, even after three years, I scarcerly notice any improvement in my painting technique.  A big difference is that this time I painted my son directly from scratch, and not drawing a pencil sketch which went scanned, as I did with Alexander.

Hope, she will like it anyway.

Anatomy references for fairies pose come from the amazing Senshistock at DeviantArt. Reference for the lovely child are, of course, my own (after maaany attempts to get a decent shot).

The High Chancellor of T'hara

Although she has formally retired, no minister will dare a decision without prior seeking her advice.

The green peafowl is her pet of choice because "in the light and shadow of power, you can make colors shift the way you want." 

Well, this started as a portrait practice in PS, and I thank Khalahari at DeviantArt for providing this great reference. Peacock from my own resources.

Quite tired of the usual portraiture cliché of beautiful-sexy-young-girls which seems to be so mainstream nowadays, I wanted to depict a powerful and mature woman, in a kind of flemish-style portrait.

The peacock nearly kill me (painting it, not when  took the pic :) ), and I'm still not completely happy with it.

Dress Code

At the court of Thulanya, evenings dresses are highly intricate and admired, also by the foreign guests visiting this place in the forest. Etiquette rules, nevertheless, forbid everyone to wear such garments during daytime.
This visitor now understands why.

This is another quick painting in the series of tiny forest people started with Faerie Amanita. I feel it pretty much undone, but the more I rendered it, the most unsatisfied I grew, so it was time to go on with something else.

A tiny Visit

Some days ago I found this little one having fun among my loved geraniums. He told me to not be upset, the flower matched so well his dress and he's so tiny that couldn't really harm my flowers.
I smiled, and asked if I could paint a portrait of him.

Queens' diplomaticy Talks

I really don't have a clue about what the old Queen Spider and Queen Seed of the Dandelions have to share with each other, but when I saw them in the morning dew, they sounded very concerned in their way to talk.

Painted in Photoshop, as usual.

Tangled

This new pic is a commission for the lovely Blossom-Lullabies at DeviantArt. This was especially challenging since this is the first time I got a commission from a Deviant.

She provided me with a picture from her stock:

and asked to be painted as Rapunzel. Because of her two-colored eyes, her request was to depict her as a two-sided Rapunzel, with one dark and one light aspect tangled with each other, which I painted with an opportune choice of different flowers, hair colors, and butterflies. What I found somehow funny is that, when looking at the final result, he light eye seems much less innocent than the dark one, as if the two personalities are tangled inside...

However,  hope she'll like my interpretation of her wishes. Otherwise, I'lll paint one more!

The Pet of Lady Usnea

If you look up, at the tree branches, when you walk in a uncontaminated forest, maybe you'll notice her or hers people walking slowly from tree to tree. Just, don't make them understand that you've seen them! They're very shy.

The Lichen Usnea Barbata lives well where pollution is low. Her crown comes from Cladonia ssp.

Faerie Amanita

Just a quick thing, not very original I suppose, made for fun in Photoshop.
When walking in the forest, it could be worth watch your step. Or maybe not?

Rita Levi Montalcini - Painter

I found at home a very old disk of Corel Painter Essential 3, so I installed it and tried to see how it works. 

I spent a lot of time trying the different settings for brushes, and fighting against some bugs and mysteries of this program, which works in another way than Photoshop but is somehow similar to Artrage.

I tried to follow a tutorial of the wonderful Corrado Vanelli from the last issue of ImagineFX, but looks like my program version is so old that I couldn't find many of the described tools, ahah.

As practice, I did a quick portrait sketch in honor of the great scientist and Nobel laureate Rita Levi Montalcini, who passed away few days ago. The reference pic is a photo found in Google.