Making Of 'Faydrums'

I did this some time ago, looking at it now, there are some parts I would do different. But I'm still happy about the overall mood of the image. The whole piece is based on one of my ever returning dreams; shining green water and a forest full with trees, older then the first big cities.

I started sketching very roughly with Photoshop's standard brushes: Airbrush Pen - Opacity Flow on a small sized sketch - later stretching the sketch to the final size of 3318 x 5782 px at 300 dpi.

At first I was thinking about giving her lilywhite fairy skin, but later I dropped this idea and settled on a more normal looking tone.

To get things as realistic as possible, I have used some of my pictures that I have saved as reference. This is especially useful for the drawing the hands and feet.

Next step is her clothing and then the background.

Working on her outfit, was quite simple as it's very warm in this forest, so there was no need for drawing much clothing.

Enough work on the elven girl for now so lets do some work on the background, which looks very messy right now (image 6 and 7). I have used a few textured brushes to get a bit more variation in my brushstrokes, but in the end I switched back to my usual 2 brushes: the "soft round" with other dynamics set to pen pressure and the standard "airbrush pen opacity flow".

Using some of the skin colors that were brought from the background. I started working on the pond. Removing the old stone figure, I've added some water ripples by smudging slightly over some parts of the ground texture


I have included also some tiny fishes in the pond. I guess no one can really see them, but I'm happy to know that there is life in the water.

Here are some in-between steps of the composition.

Here are some close ups of the Elven shoes for the Elven lady.

Right, it's now time to work on the whole image. The background is way too blurry and undetailed right now and the lighting could be improved too. I was thinking about the large "negative space" for a while but then decided to stay with the huge background as I wanted to show size of the trees far in the background

As this whole idea for this image came from a recurring dream, I have given her a poppy flower to carry as this is a symbol of Morpheus the god of the dreams

Working on her black-blue hair, I decided it would look rather good to give her some long horns on her head.

I was aiming for a wet-haired look as the old pier/path is broken at some places, which indicates, that she might have to leave the path from time to time.


Adding a rope bridge was to lead the viewer deeper into the forest... And more birdies.

To give the image a bit more life I have included some birdies flying in from the left.

I have added a little more paint on her dress.

To set the right mood for the scene, I have added some sunbeams. To check if the image works with the new lighting, I've produced a greyscale image by making a copy of, setting the layer mode to "luminosity" (on top of a black filled layer). And it also helps to flip the image from time to time to get a view for a different angle.

Some additional highlights on the ferns and now I'm finished! One last final close-up of the tiny blue singer with an approximated weight of 11 grams.

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