Yellow and Red Polka Dot Fairy illustration

A while back I was asked if I had any butterfly paintings in my repertoire. At the time, I didn't really. Ever since then I've been thinking, why on earth not? It certainly is up my alley (I do love beautiful things and I do love to paint creatures who fly). So, I started painting butterflies.

This piece was inspired by a job that never panned out. The assignment was to create paintings for the walls at a new work-out center for women called Butterfly Life. Originally I had in mind to paint real womanly figures in all stages of age and fitness. I still might do that someday. I took some photo reference at the time, which I decided to put to use.

I've been working on this yellow and red polka dot fairy illustration for my portfolio on and off for a while now. I got stuck at one point, having let it get too precious, I realized that I needed to put in the shadows from her form onto the background behind her as well as the shadows from the petals onto her. I was afraid of ruining the piece. Working with watercolor is always so tricky that way. I had one chance to lay in the shadow wash correctly. If I messed up, there wasn't anything I could do about it. (Well, actually in this modern age, I did have a back-up. I photographed it before laying in the wash. If I ruined it, I could have always put in a shadow in Photoshop. Not the best result, but better than nothing, I guess.)

In order to have the best chance at success, I decided to build a little model (a very crude sculpture), light it, and photograph it to approximate what the shadow would look like so that I would have some reference to give it authenticity.

I'm pretty pleased with the result. In the end, I think it worked out relatively successfully. She definitely looks like she is sitting in the water lily now.
Here's how it looked before the shadows were added: