Come Away O Human Child

...To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand 
For the world's more full of weeping 
Than you can understand. 

Recommended listening: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBuugW…

Soooooo here's this damn thing. I started sketching out the lines for this, mmm, the summer before I started law school I think. It was originally meant to be a personal challenge--draw a human-shaped thing! With human legs! (sob) And color it completely watercolor-style, paint only! (SOB) (Hint: I looove love love my India Inks, but watercolor and I just do not get along. Halp). 

Anyway so I got it to something presentable-ish with just the watercolors, so I was pretty happy with myself...but the piece needed more to be its best self. And I can't let something that I worked hard on off into the world without being as SHINY and MAGICAL as I can possibly make it. Soo...this happened. 

It is now pretty definitely mixed-media, with a significant amount of paper-cut elements. There's all the leaves in the bottom left, top left, and top right corners, the ferns in the bottom right corner, and parts of Oberon's antlers because I COULD NOT decide on a color scheme for them. The rest is mostly India Ink, with accents in white gel pen, liquid acrylic, ink pen, and some very limited colored pencil and nail polish. 

I wish you guys could see how shiny this is without it totally ruining the quality of the picture. There are a lot of subtle-ish shiny bits that make it really gorgeous in real life (as well as being able to see the full effects of the paper-cut textures, sigh). Namely, the wings have slight hints of nail polish, most of the leaves have little sparkly silver edges, and Oberon and Titania are just COVERED with shiny. Oberon especially--the gold pattern on his vest is exceedingly glitzy, and his antlers actually glow silver when seen in the light. 

Altogether, I'm pretty damn proud of this thing. It's maybe not my magnum opus or anything, but I pushed myself to do a level of detail and variety that I'm not usually comfortable with, and I'm pretty pleased the with the result. Obviously I didn't work on this thing nonstop for four years, but it's been lurking in the back of my sketchbook for ages begging for some finishing touches, and it feels wonderful to be able to send it out into the world, finally. 

And finally: I'm not going to lie and pretend that Oberon there wasn't strongly inspired by Jareth (if the owl motif and the crystal ball didn't clue you in). Jareth was--is--just the ultimate suave, dangerous faery king. So, this wasn't meant to be quite so timely...but at the same time, farewell, Goblin King. You will be missed, but I think you've found your immortality one way or another. 

Anyway. Hope you guys like it. I'm pretty fond of it myself. :3