I'm resubmitting this because I repainted the background and did some touch ups on the Dahl to enter it into CG Talks Expose [link] . It's on it's 4th book and I decided to give getting in a shot. Wish me luck! One of the biggest issues I had as an artist last year was my lack of ability to paint good backgrounds. I have a better understand of LOTS of things and chose this to fix up to show how I'd improved. It's my favorite of my Dahlz series. Don't feel inclined to comment again ;; unless it's on the updated background parts. The old versio is here: [link]

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I have 3 more of these leaf ladies that I plan on doing at the moment. I've got a bunch of ideas for pics of them but I've only got line art for 4 done. I guess I should give the info on this delicate creature since they've suddenly just popped up.

First off they are called Dahlz. It's pronounced like the word Dolls though. Remember this [link] creature? I have a universal set of creatures I call the Dollz. They come in all shapes and sizes and appearances. These lovely ladies are the female versions, the only ones that are obviously female. They are basically walking plants. They can't speak but instead they giggle and coo to 'Enchant' male Fairies. They then proceed to suck the life force out of them so they can pollinate, produce seeds, and die. That's their life. They live for about a week. If they don't reproduce within a week they die without spreading their seed. The process repeats itself with their offspring. It's just one of those redundant natural cycles in nature. They can only enchant men, so Vielle reacts to them wearily. And then proceeds to kick their asses for going after Myth and Hanz. They can be quite vicious if you get in their way and they get extremely jealous of non Dahl female creatures clinging onto their set prey. They are attracted to pheromones, much like insects to flowers, and can be quite picky of who they go after.

Men can't really resist them, but Hanz puts up a good fight. If there's no attraction from the man, sexually, then the Dahlz have to force their prey down. They can morph their limbs into vines to use as restraints. Sounds like rape huh? They like to work in groups of 2 and they basically share men. (I'm slowly making them sound like whores... @_@) But... yes... these creatures don't show up until the second volume of FG towards the mid/end of the journey. They cause a lot of trouble too. I can't wait to get to those scenes.

XD Green is such a fun color to play with.