Dawn of the Hamadryad

When I received the IX 2019 Commission from Pat and Jeannie Wilshire I sent them a few ideas as to what I could paint for it. We agreed on the landscape idea "The Dark Citadel" which I finished earlier this year and will be exhibited at IX in Reading this coming October. However they also liked the sound of the figurative idea "Dawn of the Hamadryad" and suggested that I paint that as well to bring along to the show. I finally got round to painting it when I came across the circular canvas's that had just arrived at my local art supplies shop, Cass in Brighton. I had been thinking about painting one for some time and this was the final impetus for starting it on a larger scale after painting a couple of preparatory pictures earlier, "Dawntree" and "Dryad". The circular format seemed to give it something extra that I needed to make a start and I decided to compose it in such a way as to make good use of the circle, tree trunks and branches being ideal for this as you can move and twist them around to fit. 
I intended this to look a little like a Victorian painting such as by Leighton, Draper etc (the hubris!) and gave it a suitably overblown title but once I had started on the tree it became pretty clear that it was going to be very much a Fantasy painting...which is fair enough. I think that if I had painted the tree more realistically I might have got nearer to my original intention but I just got carried away with the writhing branches etc. Incidentally this kind of circular painting is called a Tondo.
I managed to scan this painting on my A4 scanner by assembling 17 separate scans in Photoshop as I have never been satisfied by anything that has been photographed digitally in Copy Shops etc.
So I will be bringing this and the studies to the IX show in October. Oil on canvas 24" diameter.
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.