Between 2000 and 2011, I added fantasy/illustrative art to the other kinds of art I was doing. I had started playing an online game called Gemstone, which is a Medieval fantasy role-playing game in which each player develops a character and goes on quests. My character's name was Rraven. This aroused my interest in fantasy art. A fantasy artist whose work I liked was named Rowena, and she used herself as a model for at least some of the characters in her artwork. To me, that was a great idea, because then I could just pose how I wanted my character to pose, take photos on a timer, and then draw from the photos. 

Even better, was that I had Adobe Photoshop on my computer. I drew my pictures in pencil, and then scanned them into the computer. I could draw my character, and then copy and paste her into a setting I had drawn, move her around, change her size, and so on. I started out with the character kneeling and setting a candle on the floor. When I decided to change and add the book, I posed with the book, and then just drew my hands and the book, and used Adobe photoshop to manipulate the images. It takes some practice to do that kind of image manipulation. Then

Another cool thing about having the digital option (Adobe Photoshop), is that I could try variations with the same image. Just duplicate the image, put it in different settings, try different colors, etc. To get the darkened scene in the center second row, I just had to go to the "filters" and click "invert". My daughter, Liz, modeled for the lady with butterfly wings, and my friend, Art posed for the sleeping warrior.