I have finally finished this painting I have been working on since September! This is Papageno and Papagena from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” – continuing my work inspired by the opera. Watercolor and colored pencil, 12×16. I am getting it nicely framed for display at Illuxcon 8 in October.
Those feathers were a lot of work! But so much fun to paint. I would love to continue in my Magic Flute series but my time for personal work has been very limited lately because of the tarot job with Llewellyn, other commissions, and upcoming travel plans. I really need to do portraits of Tamino and Pamina though, either together or separate. And Sarastro! And Monostatos! Ahh! Need to get cracking 
If anyone is curious about progress – here’s a picture while I was in the midst of it. I scanned my drawing, which was pencil on vellum, (view here: http://www.albaillustration.com/blog/?p=787), colorized it to a brownish color, and printed it lightly onto my watercolor paper to work on top of. I then started adding washes of color, building it up, bringing back my line work with paint. Colored pencil was last, to bring back the details in the wings, darken some areas, soften some areas, and for some white highlights. I then spray varnished it.
I currently have prints available of this piece (and the pencil version) at INPRNT: http://www.inprnt.com/gallery/albaillustration/.
My Etsy store will be ‘on vacation’ until October, so INPRNT will be the only place my work will be available as prints until then!