Hi everyone,

This went through a number of iterations over the 6 weeks or so that it took to complete – I began with the idea of an ancient dryad presiding over some kind of wedding ceremony, and it evolved into a concept based around birth and parenthood. This dryad is nurturing her own young sapling in the gloaming.

The image is about 11500 x 6500 – the biggest I’ve ever done, and was created that large so I can print it off as a mural for my daughter, about 3 metres wide. You can’t see it at this resolution, but the glade is teeming with life – beavers, a fox, wild boar, a stag, a faun, fish, frogs etc – all things she can pick out when this is printed at full resolution. I’ll probably add more as time goes by but I wanted to call this ‘finished’ for now. It is my usual combination of painting and photography (all my own except for the heavily over-painted little girl and some stock critters).

Thanks a million for looking and take care,

Phil

PS I'm rambling a bit here but in case anyone's interested, I kept track of the 200 or so layers, trying to show how it was built up from scratch, tree by tree, rock by rock almost - you can see a ‘guide’ image here, where every 'patch'is a seperate layer -

http://tinyurl.com/345npj

Edited to add method details.