Peacock Prophecy in progress

          Here's the final drawing I finished earlier this month - 24" x 30". It will be completed in oil. Last year at Illuxcon 4, I met a talented artist, Alla Bartoshchuk. She's one of the Illuxcon 4 scholarship recipients. I thought she'd be a great model for a future painting. At the time I didn't have any sketches or ideas so I just took a quick photo of her face with her permission of course :) Thanks Alla!
          After returning home I did several different thumbnails. I was pretty set on an idea inspired by Art Nouveau but months later I developed this concept which works better for me. The women interacting with peacocks surrounded by transforming mist - houses and trees in the distance about to be consumed by a dust storm - birds fleeing from the rising destruction.
          This is the result after researching and gathering all of the reference material. I may build a couple tiny, rough models of the peacock bodies to use as reference before I paint them? I messed around with a color study but after drawing the first peacock I started having visions of old Japanese paintings so that's the look I'm going to attempt to achieve in areas of the painting.
          I've never done a painting on masonite so a big thanks to E.M. Gist for sending me a link to his blog on how to prepare the surface! You can see his art here and Alla's here. For more info. on Illuxcon 5 click here. I'm aiming to be finished with this piece in September.