WIP Wednesday

I'm a huge fan of Marina Bychkova's Enchanted Dolls. Every single doll is unique, and the costumes and accessories she creates for them are exquisite - she creates every detail painstakingly by hand, and there are a LOT of details!  I would kill to own one, but they justifiably cost a pretty penny, and are way out of my budget.  However, every year she holds a contest for her birthday and the prize is an Enchanted Doll.  One year, the challenge was to create a piece of artwork based on one of her dolls, and I jumped at the chance to enter.

Unfortunately while I was halfway through my painting, I had a surprise trip to hospital to have surprise emergency surgery on a surprise ovarian cyst.  Needless to say, I was out of commission for a while, and that deadline for the contest blew past me.  I was pretty damn disappointed, and never found the drive to go back and finish the painting.  But I still like it, and still want to finish it. After all, there's no reason why I can't send it to Marina as a little token of my fangirlism, contest or no contest.

The doll I picked to paint was Cinderella, but I planned on sneaking references to a couple of others in there.  The mermaid is the first.  The others I never got around to adding.  I'm pretty sure only die hard Enchanted Doll fans would spot them anyway.

This is the composition I eventually decided to go with.  Originally I started working on the one below, portraying the moment Cinderella approaches the castle, but something about it wasn't working.  There is still something about her posture and expression that I love here, but ultimately I decided to go with a different moment - fleeing the ball as the clock strikes midnight.  And yes, her dress IS supposed to have a top half. An incredibly complex top half that I wasn't even attempting to start until I was sure I had the underlying anatomy down correctly!