I’ve finished my green hill painting, and it turned out to be a new edition in my tree spirit collection! I’ve a love of tree spirits, they appear in different forms in various mythologies, in Greek mythology they’re called Dryads, the Japanese have Kodama – the most gorgeous forms of which were portrayed in Studio Ghibli‘s movie Princess Mononoke, and the Scottish have a tree guardian called Ghillie Dhu. I’ve a sketch book of different tree spirits, and this one I’ve tried painting a couple of times but never been happy with how she turned out. Sometimes it takes me a few tries before I find the right medium for an artwork. My first effort was acrylic and it didn’t sit right, so that one became the study for a final work in oil. I tried another in oil but wasn’t happy with the scale or pose so let it sit. Yesterday I sketched about a half dozen different ideas that all wanted to be perched on my green hill, and this one clicked. I had a bit of a rough night so I spent a lot of the day catching up on sleep and mulling over the painting. By late afternoon it looked like this:

And finished at about midnight:

The photo isn’t quite true to colour, the moon is a blend of pale yellows and the stars are yellow or white. I think she’s gorgeous, she’s called Moon in her arms. The first painting I ever sold was a tree spirit, here she is:

Looking forward to more paintings in this series. 🙂