I created this drawing way back in the very beginning of June, 2002 as a commission for a friend of mine, a local disk jockey known as "DJ Blaze." He was mixing two different demo music CDs to give to potential employers, and he asked me to design the cover artwork for his Euro dance music CD. He already had a really good idea of what he wanted for his CD cover art, and presented me with a layout that showed me where I should put the mountains in the background and everything. He wanted a scantily clad fairy on the cover of the CD, and left it up to me to design one for him.
Except for the occaisional The Legend of Zelda fan art drawing, I never really was into drawing fantasy artwork. It had been a long time since I had drawn anything besides animal girls and furries, but I was confident that I would do a good job. I quickly came up with an idea for a beautiful anime-style fairy based off of a butterfly I saw once in a National Geographic Magazine: the Blue Morpho butterfly. I decided to put her in a gold/ chain mail bikini top and a sarong to make her outfit appear as exotic as her wings. I also added some brightly colored arm and leg bands and some jewelry to make her outfit even more fancy. I also gave her a very soft and friendly personality-- I wanted her to be one fantasy you wanted to stay with forever! My only complaint about her is her eye color. I couldn't decide if I wanted her eyes to match her hair color or to make them green, and I chose to have them match her hair. In retrospect, I think green might have been a better choice, but she still looks very good.
I created the background using a freeware landscape generator known as Terragen. I spent hours playing with all of the different settings to get the desired night appearence. Since my friend had already decided exactly how he wanted the mountains in the drawing to be laid out, it took me another hour or so to make the Terragen landscape match his vision. The stars and the trees were added to the landscape using Jasc Paintshop Pro 7.04. I came up with the great idea of having magic balls of light trailing and illuminating Azura, which I really think makes the drawing special. The name "Azura" came from the word "Azure," which is another name for atmospheric blue.
I originally wasn't supposed to design the fairy for DJ Blaze's CD cover. That honor was reserved for another friend of mine. I was just supposed to make the background for the image. I admire my other friend's drawing abilities, but he hadn't started drawing the character for DJ Blaze yet and I knew I could do a better job so I asked DJ Blaze if I could design the entire cover including the fairy. He agreed and said he would keep which ever fairy turned out better. I got the drawing done within days-- I still don't think my other friend has even drawn his fairy yet. He was kind of upset that I was competing with him, but I knew he would probably never get around to doing it himself. This CD cover is probably the best drawing combined with a Terragen background I have ever done. It definitely makes one cool CD cover! I can't wait to see it when his CD is released!
The pencil work was done on 80lb. Strathmore meduim-surface drawing paper with a Sanford Non-Photo blue pencil. I then inked it with assorted ZiG Millennium pens. It was then cleaned up and darkened in Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.04. I then printed it out on standard Georgia-Pacific FAX/Copy paper and colored it with Crayola and Sanford Prismacolor colored pencils. The background was created with Terragen and Paintshop Pro 7.04. The lettering was done with Paint Shop Pro 7.04.
All text and original multimedia is © 2002 Daniel Keller. All other information is copyrighted by their respective owners.