Monday, January 19, 2015

The Digital Dozen does Fairy Tales - Day 5: The Seven Ravens


Hi, all! Sorry I'm so late with my final Digital Dozen post! This Fairy Tale week was a toughy for me, but I absolutely loved seeing what all the other ladies put together for the week.
Day 5 of DD week ends with yet another Brother's Grimm tale - The Seven Ravens. The story tells of a man and wife that had 7 sons but they desperately wanted a daughter. When the wife finally gave birth to a baby girl, the baby was sickly and her parents feared she would not make it. In case things took a turn for the worse, the family wanted to quickly baptize the daughter and so he sent his 7 sons to fetch water for the baptism. When the sons get to the well, they manage to drop the bucket down the well and NONE of these dummies can figure out what to do to get the water and so instead of returning home to figure something else out...they just stay by the well.
The father, understandably frustrated at this point, cries out in anger, "I wish the boys were all turned to ravens!" And as it goes in fairy tales, his wish came true and his seven sons returned to him in the form of seven ravens. The daughter ends up surviving but the are unable to change the seven brothers back to their human selves. As time goes on, the sister go on a quest to save the brothers and in the end, everyone returns back to their normal (boring) humans selves ;)
I'm not sure why, but this story made me smile. It's pretty absurd but there is some awesome artwork inspired by the story floating around the internet and I was really excited to try and create my own version.

I started with a base of Cirque's Midnight Cowboy, then painted blobs of China Glaze's Five Rules over the top. With a dry brush, I spread the grey polish over the blue to create the background. I don't know about you guys, but I think that the background of these can pull a whole mani together.
Next, I took some acrylic paints and added the tree branch and the leaves in various shades of green and brown to create some texture. Then came the ravens. Let's just acknowldege that the ravens are a bit on the abstract side ;) I used black acrylic paint and then a slightly lighter grey version over that to add accents to each bird.
Overall, I like this look. I'm so beyond happy to be done with this theme! I'm pretty sure I voted for it initially...and I'm pretty sure I made a mistake in doing that :p I hope you all enjoyed this week and liked seeing the manis from all the new ladies in the group!

Happy Polishing :)