The fourth in the row of commissioned pieces, based on a story by the client. It's also the last one I will be able to show for the time being:

The Fallen are - as the name suggests - creatures who have fallen from grace. Or maybe they never fell, and have always been nightmares incarnate. No one knows what they really look like, as they can appear as anything they choose to drive their victim into insanity, and thus servitude or, if you're lucky, death...

Again there was no real brief. Neither my client nor I knew how to best depict these creatures. It wasn't until I was sketching for "The Fair" that I had the idea of doing what I did here - to go for a subtle yet obvious counterpart.
Painting it caused me quite a headache at several stages, because there was always something that didn't feel quite right, and then Photoshop decided to ditch several hours of my work at one point - lets just say I wasn't a happy critter. In the end though something clicked, and it all kind of came together.

I used personal references mainly for the hands and angle of the face.

Some close-ups:







Thanks for looking! =]