Most representations of dryads, the spirits that live in trees, show them as beautiful, willowy mostly human women, with flowing green hair and ethereal features (except for certain endowments which are often not at all ethereal.) And this makes sense, because humans are the ones making up the stories about dryads, after all.

But if other creatures met the spirits of trees and told stories about them, I suspect their versions would look very different indeed.

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Because somebody's going to ask--yes, the tree took awhile. I wanted to do a really complicated tree, something inspired by Quinton Hoover and Stephanie Law, and while it wasn't difficult, per se, it was definitely time-consuming. The initial pass with colored pencils took about three and a half hours. The only way for me to do this is to throw my colored pencils in my Ganesh lunchbox and lug the art down to Mr. Toad's, my local coffee shop, and work on it while people talk to me, because it requires about one third of a brain to do the colored pencils, and after the first twenty minutes it is Boring As Hell.

Fortunately, they know me well at the Toad--I have art hangin' there now--and a good thing, because at 8.5 x 26, this sucker was pretty large, and it took a lot of conversation to get the dang thing done.

I am sufficiently pleased with how it came out--and more importantly, enamored of the notion of animal dryads--to want to do another one once I can stand the sight of a tree again, whenever that is. I bet a badger dryad would be awfully cool...

The original is SOLD. Prints are available, in 8.5 x 11 for $10 (although it's the size of a bookmark, due to the format!) or the jumbo for $20 (recommended if you want to see details.) Visit [link] or send a note!