a dragon confides in a fairy

A DRAGON CONFIDES IN A FAIRY

digital art

© Lise Winne 2016

new! Prints available in any size, from 6" x 8" up to 30" x 40". Available on 

canvas, acrylic, giclee, etc. Through the same link, products are also for sale with this item (cell phone cover, apparel, etc). Go HERE for both prints and products).

For a home printed giclee print which is hand signed, I will be putting that up for sale soon (check back on this page)

For the rest of this post, I describe a little of how I made this piece by showing "work in progress" details.

This is how it all started, by spotting these two figures having a tete a tete at a Renaissance faire:

A DRAGON CONFIDES IN A FAIRY

(raw photo)

Naturally I hated the background, so I took the figures out of their environment.

Why did I do that?

Does a sidewalk that mere mortals walk on belong here? No, of course not. Do fairies enjoy gravel? No way. Though I did save a touch of gravel here and there in the final piece. 

Fairies are small creatures, and they do best in an environment where plants are bigger in size than they are. Dragons tend to be huge, but since this one has sneakers, he could be a dragon at the toddler stage.

This is the basic environment I gave them (I decided to save the basket and chair too from the original photo):

A DRAGON CONFIDES IN A FAIRY

(preliminary I)

Better. They seem to fit in naturally in an environment of weeds, brambles and small flowers.

You may not be able to tell, but I also gave the fairy more of a complexion; she was looking awfully pale.

There was still something missing. 

The dragon's suit, though cute, resembles a workman's coverall a little too much. So, I gave him more reptilian skin. The scales on his tale also needed some texture, so I took care of that. Then his wings were a little too drab, so I brightened them up and put a few sparks in them.

The fairy still wasn't magical enough (for me). So I made her wings glow and put some luminaries around her. 

If you look closely at the next enhanced photo, you'll notice that the fairy's basket has some sparkles too.  

The background and foreground needed a lot more flowers. So I grabbed flowers from a photo shoot I did in Maine awhile back at this magical little garden with exotic flowers. Not that you can tell they are exotic. What mattered was that I could incorporate them.

Also, when a dragon talks, he has to have fire coming out of his mouth. A dragon would not be a dragon without that element, so the fire was a necessity. So I took a photo of a flame on a light background and put it on its side. The fire part of this piece was the most difficult to master. Fire is not a solid object. There are places where you can see through it and places where you can't. It also does not shoot straight out, which is what it looked like when I first started. So making it curve toward the sky was another challenge.

Also, around the dragons face, it needed to be brighter, since fire would light it up. 

The dragon also seemed to need smoke around it. After all, its innards are full of fire (right?), so it has to be smokin' from head to toe in some manner!

This was what I thought would be the final piece:

A DRAGON CONFIDES IN A FAIRY

(preliminary II)

And I was happy with it for awhile. 

Then I wasn't happy. For days I couldn't tell what it needed. It just seemed to be missing something! 

Then it dawned on me: the chair had nothing on it. A fairy wouldn't just use it to sit on, would she? She would place something on it while she went to talk to the dragon. Fairies are very busy, so they have to multi-task.

What would be the perfect thing for the chair? A flower, of course:

    A DRAGON CONFIDES IN A FAIRY

(preliminary II)

That is a real flower, just in case you wanted to know. But here it looked like a pom-pom.

No, no, no, that wouldn't do. 

It took an entire evening to put that flower in there too, but it just wasn't the right kind of flower.

So, out it went. 

So I searched my files and came up with this one instead:

 A FAIRY's CHAIR WITH A FLOWER

Better. And I did put some shadowing under the flower and its stem to make it sit and belong in its environment. But if you check the final piece (first picture above), I made the flower a little more purple so that it wouldn't detract from the fairy and her companion. Here it seems to be shouting out; it is just so neon -- and the dragon does not need to be distracted by the fairy's bright flower. 

Next time, I'll be attempting to do something with this photograph: 

FAIRY, WIZARD, KNIGHT and FAIR MAIDEN QUE
(preliminary I)

Until next time ...

   

some other Beltane fests I found on the web

This one is from Glastonbury, UK

This is one from Ulster County, NY

and included a maypole dance in addition to the bonfire dance.

This is meant to be a continuation of my other two posts, Beltane Favorites and A Beltane Party, 2014.

Our party had many more drummers (with some professionals in the mix) than either of these two events.   

A great way to celebrate spring!

A Beltane Party, 2014

Beltane Fire Dancer

2014

In the last post, I mentioned some of the artists on my private Facebook page that celebrate Beltane and make Beltane-related art. If you are new to my blog see the previous post HERE. 

Do you wonder what a Beltane festival or party is? Go here to the Wikipedia article on it. In short, it is a Gaelic festival about the arrival of Spring typically celebrated on May Day (or a weekend before or after, for those who work M - F). 

Since I know a lot of people who love to celebrate these events, I get invited to a lot Beltane rituals, parties and art-happenings. The fire dancer above was at one of the ones I attended. You can't see her costume, but she wore boots, a mini skirt with bright metallic-like spangles and a headdress with horns. There were at least 10 drummers there to keep her on beat. At this particular event there were about four fire dancers and one fire-eater.

Some people showed up in costume: there were women with a bouquet of flowers around their head, other folks with horns and leaves on their heads and heavily tattooed, some were wearing the Celtic tree of Life somewhere on their person, some re-enactors came with full body chainmaille and impressive ornate swords, some people came with Irish capes and some people didn't dress up at all. In other years I have gone, some people showed up with Green Man masks and regalia and some came with faerie costuming. I was disappointed they weren't there this time. This year there were more tee-shirts, jeans and beer than other years, possibly because there were a lot of young rock bands in the barn on the property (or maybe it was the cold night: who wants to cover up a nice costume with blankets or a coat?).

Some Beltane festivals have Maypole dancing as well, but that kind of event usually takes place in the day time. It also features women with long dresses and flowers in their hair as this picture will confirm. I have also done quite a bit of Maypole dancing throughout the years to celebrate Beltane.

Almost all of the Beltane festivals I have been to feature a bonfire where people dance to drums. For these pictures, these bonfires had just been lit, so there were no dancers yet. There were 3 bonfires in all. A large medieval-like catapult was used to throw a minimal fire into a large pile of wood (i.e. to light the bonfire). 

Here are some pictures of the bonfires:

I liked this photo of a boy in profile:

Here are some more pictures of the fire dancers:

Beltane is also about sitting around fire pits, socializing (the picture is blurry because it was after sundown, a few minutes before the sky turned pitch black):

It is also about eating, drinking and being merry. In this case I was more interested in what was going on behind the people eating, which is why they aren't particularly featured:

Which brings me to a situation where more explanation is probably due. This Beltane party was held at a friend's studio (and grounds). He is a sculptor and there are sculptures everywhere, on everything imaginable. I'd love to tell you who made all of these beautiful pieces (and he very much deserves the credit), but since they are on his private property, I won't, but it makes for an even more enchanting Beltane experience.   

Here is one of his sculptures that has been offered a beer by some of the guests in the background (again, it was taken after sundown, so it is amazing I got any photo at all):

Here is one of the roads (this particular road led to the party, which is why there are lanterns placed along it). In the dark, the lanterns illuminate the faces of the sculptures. It is really a cool effect when you're tired and you are stumbling your way back to your car. Every road should be lined with sculptures to help you on your journey through life:

Some of the statues along that road:

Here is gypsy-type caravan he made complete with a relief sculpture above the door:

Even the wood-stacking shelter gets some sculpture:

How about a tree? Super fuzzy photo -- but you get the idea...

Even a cart that he made gets the treatment:

Here is another one of his carts (just because I liked it). One of his sculptures you can see in the background of the photo:

Here is one last one I took (before I couldn't take any more pictures of anything except fire):

Perhaps another year I can get some Beltane photos that aren't challenged by a quickly setting sun!

I hope you've enjoyed going down Beltane lane with me.