And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The Knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Layde Of Shalott.

_________________________________

So. I was listening to the song, and I thought to myself, "Self, that would be a really cool manip!" So I merrily went on my way, pulling stock and planning out my canvas. And then everything went wrong.

First I forgot to save my "Layde" before I sized her down. And when I tried to pump her back up, a lot of the detail was lost. Not that you can see much detail as it is now, postcard-sized. Why didn't I just redo it, you ask? Uh, negative, Ghostwriter. I'm not THAT committed. Now, usually I work with a HUGE canvas, a couple thousand pixels at least. But because of the sizing problem, I had to size EVERYTHING down to match, and cut a good chunk of my background out. I HATE working small, it blows like a whale. I originally had that other horse, the Knight/Lancelot, in full view on a sort of bank on the far left. I actually spent more time on him (he's a really gorgeous friesan, btw) than I did on the Layde. But since I cut his part of the background out, I had to stick him on that random bridge in the waterfall/mist. Whatever it is. Everything is so damned SMALL and FOGGY, I can hardly tell.

On a brighter note, I really enjoy doing fantasy pieces like this. I've been on a realism kick lately, but this was fun. Cheers everyone!

Please tell me what you think!