Pas De Deux

Well I would have liked to get this done earlier, but Christmas snuck up on me faster than usual. Anyways, it's inspired by my favourite piece from The Nutcracker Ballet. You can tell listening to it that Tchaikovsky was a hopeless romantic.

Merry Christmas!! oxox

Morticia Addams

Moonlit Encounter

Eliza

Mermaid Consoles the Unicorn

"A mermaid AND a unicorn? Are you MAD?" Perhaps. I've seen this theme explored by other artists but I found their compositioning awkward, understandable when trying to pair a tall land creature with a legless, sea-dwelling one. I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I find it difficult to clothe mermaids, seems too Disney-ey, not "realistic" (because as we all know mermaids ARE real. *cough*)

Lorelei

According to German legend, there was once a beautiful young maiden, named Lorelei, who threw herself headlong into the river in despair over a faithless lover. Upon her death she was transformed into a siren and could from that time on be heard singing on a rock along the Rhine River, near St. Goar. Her hypnotic music lured sailors to their death. The legend is based on an echoing rock with that name near Sankt Goarshausen, Germany. Ink & watercolor.

The Red Shoes

Ink & Watercolour. It's inspired by the movie, which was inspired by the fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen.

The Highwayman

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes - One of my favourite poems since elementary school (and also of Loreena McKennitt songs.) Ink and watercolour.

"He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West."

Wolf Moon

Ink and watercolor

The Five Sisters of York

Ink drawing colored digitally

Based on a short story by Charles Dickens, in Nicholas Nickleby.

Snowflake Waltz

Ink drawing colored digitally

Inspired by Tchaikovsky's Snowflake Waltz from The Nutcracker

Emily of New Moon

Ink drawing colored digitally

Based on one of my favourite literary characters by Lucy Maude Montgomery.

The Lady of the Lake

Ink drawing, colored digitally

With head upraised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent
And locks flung back, and lips apart
like a monument of Grecian art.
In listening mood, she seemed to stand
The guardian Naiad of the strand.

And ne'er did a Grecian trace,
A Nymph, A Naiad or a grace,
of finer form, or lovlier face!

~Sir Walter Scott

Rosa

Ink and watercolor
This is a Dickens character, from David Copperfield. A strange, vitriolic woman, Miss Rosa Dartle suffers unrequited love for David's friend James Steerforth. She is described as being extremely skinny and displays a visible scar on her lip caused by Steerforth.

"I don’t know what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been written, or set to music, but sprung out of the passion within her; which found imperfect utterance in the low sounds of her voice, and crouched again when all was still. I was dumb when she leaned beside the harp again, playing it, but not sounding it, with her right hand."

Sirens

This was painted digitally.