good job so far, though. ^^ Looks a bit like a macabre terot card. ^^`

that was one of my first thoughts as well! ^_^

Coming along nicely, IMHO. As with a tarot card there are an assortment of things that seem likely to have specific symbolic meaning, but the meaning is open to interpretation by the viewer if no key is provided. Poppies and pomegranates; a locked door, peaked and jewel-crowned, that bleeds; the dead and the living...I have my own guess about the door, but sadly I can't identify the bird.

The reds and oranges are really rich. It's looking good so far. Very vibrant.

The bird is a whippoorwill, alas the damn things are cryptic-coloured, so they're quite hard to paint :D

Interesting! I'm from Florida originally. Whippoorwills create one freaky night environment when you're out camping. There's never just one and there always sound to be a few thousand.

There's a few tribes that consider them to be psychopomps, I've heard. Between them, the occasional bull gator sounding off, and dillos plowing through the eight inch layer of dead palmetto leaves that covers most of Florida's wilderness (sounding like an armored column on the move and nothing so small or innocent as they are) Florida nights in the swamp used to sound pretty damned interesting.

Do they exist in Oz?

Lookin' good. :)

reasonably okay? man this allready looks so freaking sweet! i cant wait to see the finished one

Bats next!

That is very nicely done in deed! Your red really pops out and makes your eye travel around it, catching the other small details in the image. Hope you do a small book of all your painted and illustrated characters and images in one complete book. ^_^

I'd like to, seriously :) I think I need some more detailed material, but I might have enough, hmm...

'reasonably' okay??
Man, you must set your self-standards pretty high, girl. o_o

Meanwhile, I'm gunna add to the flood of comments that are stating that this is a great piece of work so far, and if you reckon it'll get better then well.. can't wait to see it! =D

I kind of tried to set myself the challenge of 'Do something better than anything I'd previously done'. And so...here we go! I was thinking of submitting the piece somewhere when complete. It's weird - I haven't submitted stuff anywhere since I tried several times to get into Yerf and was told I wasn't good enough...

I still reckon that was their loss for thinking that.
Well then, if that's your goal, you're doing it well so far (= As I said, it'll be nice to see it finished. hmm.. who do you reckon you could submit it to? o.o

That used to be what I was trying to do on every piece, which is why I had so few completed pieces, but some were so spectacular.

You can drive yourself to great heights with that mindset, but based on my own experience I think it's better not to do it all the time...You can drive yourself to great heights of frustration, too.

Seems to be working for you on this one. :)

And as for the Yerf! people, all I can say is that it must have been a stylistic issue and they must not have been familiar with Beardsley. You're more capable than a hell of a lot of the stock artists at least during the time frame I was submitting to it.

Try putting your work out there again. Don't let one set of folks determine your opinion of your marketability for you.

it's looking amazing so far! O_O