Here it is cleaned up with a hairdo makeover for the elf woman. I wetted some of the colored pencil strokes to blend them on her face. Modified her facial features to beautify and give more contour. Blocked in some crystals. Colored in some areas. Outlined some. I like it so much at this stage, I don't want to do too much more. I'd like to darken the cave background so that it creates contrast for the crystals. I plan to add color to oil lantern and maybe add details to her clothing. I was thinking of black lace for her neck band and hands, but I like the whiteness. I need dark areas in the cave walls if I'm going to dot them with small crystal sparkles.

The concept: An elven woman in a cave. She holds a candle lantern. The lantern light shines on crystal studded walls, making a dazzling display. The play of light against darkness in the candle-lit room is planned to be a key feature. It will be developed at the end of the process. For now, I'm laying out composition. Maybe she needs a pet dragon on her right shoulder?

The beginning stages of my artwork for this month's Enchanted Visions theme. I'll give it a title soon. I have a few possibilities. It parallels my external situation in some ways. I've been visiting Sacred Chambers for personal spiritual purposes. I'm thinking of calling it Secret Chambers. Or I can just make it more generic and call it Crystal Cave. To be decided.

To bring it to this stage, I did a rough graphite sketch onto 11" x 14 " sketch paper. The outer dimension of this represents that size. The blue rectangles are tape. They attach a smaller piece of paper onto which I sketched a revision of the elven woman's face. In an earlier version, her face was narrower. I widened it.

The current theme at Monthly Fantasy Art Auctions is Steampunk Fairy. It got me thinking about Victorian lace for her hands and neck. I researched fingerless gloves yesterday. I liked the ideas that came to me to make the lace black. I added small indications to her hands and neck area of lace. I plan to refine those areas to show fingerless lace gloves & a lace choker at her neck. I'd like to extend the lace choker to be attached to the V-neck of her clothing. I'll play with it until I get desired results. I'm thinking of make the lace color black, but that might change to dark green or blue. A vision I had of the color harmony in the final artwork was in burnt sienna, blues, and greens. I still have to land on what materials I'll use. Maybe colored pencil combined with paint and alcohol marker pens. I haven't picked the paint yet. Leaning toward acrylic, but maybe watercolor or water-based oils.

The Creek Spirit Fairy goes to the place in her heart where the beauty of the soul resides and all is eternally peaceful. There lies the source of her strength. It is eternally invulnerable. She offers a prayer for relief from the tears shed by so many people suffering from loss in its many forms. Death of loved ones, devastation from floods and other natural disasters, illness and disease, broken relationships, financial trouble, the list goes on and on.

It is said that when we commune with the Divine during the rising and the
setting of the sun and ask anything, and it will be granted. As the Creek Fairy sends out her prayers, she is completely assured that her highest hopes and fondest wishes for the relief from suffering, an Awakening for all of humanity, will be granted.

She emerges from the creek every day during the rising and setting of the sun. To outsiders, it appears that she is only sitting there on the stream bank, but she goes within to a secret place. Within to the Sacred Heart, where she communes and laughs and meets with her Divine. No matter what else happens to her in the external world.

No matter what else appears to be happening, she feels the causeless joy as it is restored to its rightful place in our lives. The tears of her strength and all her senses painlessly feed us her ojas*. A sense of renewal is restored for us, a sense of hope not lost, but left unattended. Then she returns the next day to begin the cycle again, continually until the end of time. Always taking up our burdens and cares, converting them for us back to causeless joy, food for us made from the substance of our own Eternal Selves.

This is a Work in Progress. I started it as a pencil sketch. Then I put a digital photo of it in Photoshop where I can try out various colors in Layers. It's a fun way to work out the colors for a future painting. If they don't work out they can be deleted or a Layer can be removed. After I work out the optimal color hues and combinations, I'll print an enlargement of it in a grayscale version. I'll transfer that to a piece of Bristol paper where I'll create a colored pencil, watercolor paint & pencil version of it. It really makes painting more fun by eliminating a lot of the guesswork on color choices and compatibility.
-Joyce

*Ojas is a Sanskrit word meaning “vigor." It is a pure and subtle substance. A story from an acquaintance of mine who specializes in ayurvedic medicine is that Beings in the higher spiritual realms allow their ojas to be drunk by those in need. It heals and restores those who drink it, but does not deplete the higher beings, who willingly and gladly give it to others in this way. Maybe that's an explanation for why Jesus is quoted in the scriptures as saying something like, "He who drinks from my mouth will be restored." If anyone has the exact words, you can post them in comments below.

I get to a scary stage with my paintings in progress. Sometimes this causes the stall factor. You procrastinate because you're afraid that if you touch what you've created so far, you'll ruin it.

Maybe it comes with fascination over what you achieve if you've surprised yourself by how well things are coming along. Whatever the reason, if you want to get things done, you need to find a way to overcome this. 

One solution to this that I find is very helpful is to use Photoshop, aka PS.
Once I have a photo of the painting at whatever stage it's at, I can add and
remove elements easily in PS using layers. That way, I try them out but they're not a permanent part of them and they can easily be left omitted.

My paintings are usually too large to scan into my computer before working on them in PS. I just take a digital photo of them and fix up the dimensions and color levels in PS.

After I decide what I like and want to keep, I go back to the painting and paint it in. I may do this several times before I decided that the painting is
finished.

Here's my first pencil sketch of my most current work in progress:

Here's how it looked after I added a few colors to try them out.  I didn't add these colors in Photoshop.  I added them directly to the painting.  I was feeling pretty focused and didn't think I needed to try out anything in PS before making it permanent.
After I did this much, I used PS to see how the dragon fairy at left of center dragon would look in a blue green blouse instead of the red color I gave her with colored pencil in my prelim sketch.  Unfortunately, I didn't want to keep it, didn't save it and don't have it to show you.  But now you get the idea.  The picture has progressed further since I took these 2 pics.  More may follow as soon as I get pictures to show you.