SPA-Dark Fairie

My dark fairie is a little medieval..the illustraton by Arthur Rackham is from a version of the Mort d'Arthur, the tale of Camelot, Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot and the rest.

Background made with textures from JoesSistah and Termin8tor at T4L, and the text is a brush from a set called Alchemy by JS_Scully. The stamp is my own creation.

4 by 4 Friday--Skully

Here's my piece for 4x4 Friday, where the theme is skulls. Another serendipidous piece, I started with the skull, from Google Images, and went from there. texture pieces from Pareeerica, Rubyblossom and Boccacino at T4L, some bits from Dover and a lot of playing with the blending modes.

ACF 91--The Water Bringer

This is one of those pieces that grew organically. I had no idea what to do with this lovely image...no idea at all. I started randomly applying background layers to see if anything spoke to me. The doorway seemed to work, so
I moved on to textures. I used the beauty overlay fron the Port Au Prince collection from Songbird Avenue and a texture piece by Pareeerica.

You can't imagine all the bits and embellishments I subjected this very patient lady to...

The wings are a freebie from somewhere, painted and texturized, and more texture was added with brushes. The water fountain was a really lucky find from Google Images, and really completed the piece.

Three Muses Challenge- Vintage

Here's my piece for this week's challenge--Vintage. It's based on the art of Jessie Wilcox Smith, an American illustrator fron the early 20th Century.She wasfamous for her work in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and for her illustrations for children's books.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1884 Smith attended the School of Design for Women (which is now Moore College of Art & Design) and later studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins, graduating in 1888. A year later, she started working in the production department of the Ladies' Home Journal, for five years.

She was a prolific contributor to books and magazines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrating stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's Weekly, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal.

Smith may be most well known for her covers on Good Housekeeping, which she painted from December 1917 through March 1933. She also painted posters and portraits. Her twelve illustrations for Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1916) are also well known.(Wikipedia)

The frame is from Frannie60 at Frames for Use Flickr group, and the text is courtesy of the Graphics Fairy.

Egypt

Must be all those mummies in the Halloween aisles, but Egypt has been popping up in my creative musings of late. A few weeks ago I made a digital stamp of Amenhotep, a technique from the most recent Digital Montage workshop; then I made a brush from the Eye of Horus, another technique touched on in that class. I've been looking for other Egyptian images to make brushes from--soon I'll have a whole set!

THEN, I found this gorgeous texture layer at T4L, by Pareeerica. I am SO pleased with this piece!

SPA-Scary Clowns

I will admit, I got a little carried away here. I don't like clowns much, they are all a little bit creepy, what with the white face and huge red smile--not to mention those GIANT feet! So even the most benevelolent of clowns scares me a little.

I decided to use a clown doll for my subject--how creepy could a child's toy be? HA!!

I found a few using Google images. The orange one is a tiny vintage cloth doll with a plastic face, no more than 10 inches high--someone in my childhood, a cousin, maybe, had one of these and carried it everywhere--and CHEWED on its pointy head! How's that for creepy! The second you may recognize as Bozo, who hosted a kid's TV show in Boston for many years. I will confess, I watched it. It had great cartoons! The third is a piece I did last Febuary for another Scary Clowns challenge. It's image is a Victorian iron bank--put a coin in the clown's hand, pull the lever, and he EATS it!

Some textures from Witchy 13 and Joessistah were used in the backgrounds; the altering was mostly done with the Distort filter and blending modes; details were added with PS brushes.