When I set out to create a digital painting of the character Galadriel I wanted to make it a ultra realistic painting of a photo that I had found.   I doubt I would have published the final version for copyright reasons but the steps towards it would have probably been fine as they were transformative in nature.  However, as I went along I realised the pointless of this for two reasons – the first is straightforward – why just make a copy?   If I wanted to do that then I could just have used the clone tool and been done with it.  Also it some how seemed cheating.  The second reason was that I as I worked on the painting I came to realise that the original wasn’t quite how I would have wanted the final image to look.

So armed with these reflections on my original goal  I am looking at making a more ephemeral painting – whether I succeed only time will tell.

One Ring to find them