“Waterfall Forest Fairy” was a second commissioned piece requested by my first collector. She liked the flowing robes of another piece I had done and asked for a fairy with similar. Now, I could have done it the easy way and just left a softly colorful background like I did with the flowing-robes piece, but what fun would that be?
And so, I insisted on filling her world with late-spring, early-summer detail. Here she is:
Here’s the description from the Fine Art America Page: “The Waterfall Fairy stops in a woodland stream to rest her stained-glass window wings. A beam of sunlight courses through the leafy canopy and illuminates the clover and other leaves behind her, as well as tufts of her hair and her favorite flower. She drinks in its scent, in perfect peace and oneness with her favorite landscape, fully unaware we are seeing her behind our cover of maple leaves.”
The most challenging parts of this piece were getting the waterfall and the lighting just right. Trying to get a depth and flow to the water required a lot of finagling. Sometimes the layer of white foam just did not want to behave with the underlying layers of brown, leaving me with flood waters rather than leaf-litter beneath clear waters. Eventually, it finally worked itself out. Training the sunbeam on the plants at first seemed like a simple idea; however, some of the old pastels I was using weren’t playing nicely with the new Rembrants. Again, it all eventually worked out to my approval. I added the misty effect to the back wing and edged the top of her hair in the reddish-brown of her underlying hair tones, as it would look if light were shining through.
Again, the Colour Shapers came into play. The minute detail of the face and the hair strands would have been impossible without them. Same with the rushing flow of the water or the deep, heavy tones of the rocks or flat green of the Norway Maple leaves (my backyard provided some wonderful models.)
The clover behind the fairy is actually, technically, wood sorrel, but for the Fine Art America page, I didn’t want to get into the comparison. The easy answer is that wood sorrel has heart-shaped leaves and better light translucency than clover (and is also tasty in salads, but that is a talk for another day.) In other words, perfect for the picture. The flower is an amalgamation of a few different lilies and flowers found in the United States. I was more interested in the leaves than the flower itself.
We have a few interesting effects going on here. First, on initial view, we assume she is a tall fairy standing in a waterfall. Then we realize by the size of the plants and flowers, she is actually standing in a tiny waterfall of a stream rather than a river. The maple leaves in the fore are purposely blurred around the edges, giving the visual effect of us hiding behind the leaves and peering in the distance at the little fairy enjoying the scent of her favorite flower. Another spot to note is the dress flowing into the waterfall. Is it just disappearing behind the fast-moving water, or is she magically one with the stream?
This is another piece dazzled by iridescent pastel, most notably in the hair. The few heavy locks of sparkling, teal hair gives her the ethereal edge, but the iridescent is also in play in the dress, the white of the waterfall, and the blue and yellow of the wings. This is most evident in the original or in embellished prints, but you can catch the odd flash here and there that the camera was able to grab.
Here is an early layout sketch before the color was laid down. The odd color bar is a lighting layout so I knew where I was going to brighten the colors for the sunbeam. That’s the one thing that’s great about having a digital resource even if you’re doing traditional art. It makes the planning stage much easier!
To date, this is my favorite piece, and I’m so grateful to the owner for letting me make the prints available (I have one of my own!)