Photoshop 7.0

Photo references used.

In this piece, called "Kiss of the chameleon", I went back to mostly using the airbrush again, especially on the woman. I change the opacity, size and flow all the time while painting though, so it may not look that way. I have used a couple of other brush types as well though, for the sand and her hair for instance.

This piece took probably more than twenty hours to make, from sketch to finished work.

The story of the piece:

-You've probably heard the fairytales about princesses kissing a frog in the hopes that it will turn into a prince? Well, this is a fairytale gone wrong... - She found a chameleon, and kissed it to see what it would turn into if anything, hopefully a 'prince'. But alas, it instead made her skin start to change, and she and the chameleon are beginning to swap features and skin colours! In this piece, the chameleon has climbed onto her shoulder to comfort her in their mutual misfortune...
Aawww...

Here is a closer look at the image, so you can see some of the detail:

(this painting was updated Jan. 7th. 2004)

Reference photo of sitting woman used with kind permission of the author and copyright holder of the image; Yuval Zaliouk.