Apollo and Daphne

The Greek Mythological tale of Apollo and Daphne was something I tried many times before to paint without much success... until recently. I felt like this story could make for some very interesting imagery, so I was very determined to get it finished. I put a lot of thought and work into the background in this one. In general I feel like I spend too much time concentrating on the figures during the painting process, so I tried to break that flow with this image, spending lots and lots of hours on the background alone. I created quite a few custom brushes for this one, specifically for the leaves on the background and grass in the foreground to help speed up the process, as well as obtain some very realistic textural effects as well. The tree's textures were a lot of fun to work on as well... and very, very time consuming, but I feel like I have a much more stronger and believable image because of it. Overall I'm quite satisfied with how this image turned out, and I hope you enjoy it as well.