Madame de Pompadour Painting

Recently my page view counter on deviantART has reached 5,000 so I decided to do something special to celebrate the 5,000th view. There is a painting I did a while back in Gimp of Madame de Pompadour from the Doctor Who episode Girl in the Fireplace that I never really finished. It was the first painting I ever did using my Wacom bamboo tablet so I was unsure how the response would be once I posted it online. The response was positive so I decided that the plain painting would one day receive an art nouveau-style background.

This is the sketch of the painting….

And the finished product.

After finishing the painting, I decided to add an art nouveau-style background. I did this for several reasons, but mainly because I have two posters I bought at a convention that were Doctor Who fan art, but were done in an art nouveau style. I wanted my poster to be hung beside these posters and fit it reasonably well. In order to get the background on the painting, I tried to layer it. It didn’t work. I tried it again, but it still didn’t work. A year later I gave up and decided to add the background the “old fashioned” way: painting a background onto the finished painting. No layering required.

When I saw the page views on deviantART were about 100 away from 5,000, I decided it would be a good idea to make the painting the “Thank you for the page views!” submission. I’ve been wanting to do some celebratory drawing/painting for Halloween, Christmas, Easter, or some other special event but never did. So, I thought it would be a good idea to finish the Pompadour painting.

And here’s how it looks completed….

Although I liked the background and I loved it after I posted the painting on DA, I’m not sure about the turquoise arch anymore. In my mind, it doesn’t fit Reinette or the episode very well. But I’m sick of working on this particular painting and I want to move on to other things. So, I’m planning on leaving it as-is. If I get too annoyed with the way it looks, I’ll change it but only after I’m done with other stuff I’m working on. And I want that to be in the future. WAY in the future. 😛

P.S. Madame de Pompadour and Doctor Who belongs to their rightful owners. Art belongs to me.