Tree Goddess artwork (before & after)

I would like to present you my latest artwork -
Tree Goddess.

Greetings, dear freinds and followers!

I would like to introduce you a project I wished to realise in a long time.

It all started with an aquarel I did back in 2002 that inspired me to do a tree-woman shooting as a base for a more complex artwork.

A lot of time had passed since 2002 so obviously only the main tree-lady idea stayed untouched in the end.

Finding a suitable place for this shoot, that's not too far away from my place and yet calm enough was a pretty big challenge...

but I was pretty happy with this cute tree I found, so after the shooting it was time to get to some artistic retouch.

We could affort to to a nude shooting in a public garden, so after everything was done and I set the main brightness levels a serious skin retouch to remove completely the undesired bra and tights.

After hours of retouching these details I was albe to get to the real art part, where I added a picture of another tree's roots to the main shot and blend it with the legs.

Adding some "nature" colours over her skin and more background blending to fit it all, was a neccessary step in the right direction.

After I was pretty happy with the overall composition it was time to set some colours at place and add some more details and curves to the roots.

And I was ready to start the tree crown of hands-branches that was supposed to give this important touch that I was after from the very start.

Adding some sharpness to the main details and some "nature" colour to the supplementary hands marked the final line of this piece of art.

Epilogue:

This magical dream took me an average of 19 hours of retouching and drawing by hand until I reached the desired final result.

Enjoy!

Model: Mellifère

Headpiece: Atelier Selene de Viollet

Photo, retouch & MUA: Selene de Viollet