I wear two hats with different names: Madison Woods when I’m wearing the artist hat, Roxann Riedel in real life and real estate. I'm a rock-smashing paint-making artist & a sales agent for Montgomery Whiteley Realty. Hailing from the wild Ozarks in Kingston, Arkansas where my husband and I work toward a sustainable lifestyle.

You can text or call to reach me by either name (see above):
(479)409-3429, or email madison@wildozark.com

Nature Fantasy in Ozark Pigments by Madison Woods

Nature Fantasy Paintings? Click through to see the start of my new series.

Ordinarily I paint real things that have a photograph backing them up to give me some guidance. But in between those paintings, I like to deviate a bit and paint nature fantasy. I get to indulge in my love of fairies, wizards, elves, unicorns, and Water Priestesses.

Here’s the series so far. I’ll add to this page as I get them done. Scroll down the page to see the process for painting the first one. Links to the process pages for the later ones are included below this gallery.

Water Priestess, a Nature Fantasy

This one is a re-do of a scene I did with Prismacolor pencils a while back. The idea was to do all the elemental priestesses, but so far all I’ve done are water and tree (wood). Eventually I’ll get around to earth, fire, wind, and metal, too. No idea how to portray the metal with my earth pigments, but surely there will be a way.

Here’s the one in pencil:

"Water Priestess" by Madison Woods, nature fantasy artist.
Water Priestess in colored pencils. 2017
Nature Fantasy in Ozark Pigments by Madison Woods
And here’s the one in Ozark pigment watercolors. Without the blue and green, it looks a lot different, but I still like it a lot. The original is sold. Prints are available, but not listed, so email me if you’d like to order one.

Nature Fantasy Painting in Progress

So here’s the process of the one in Ozark pigments. Except for the form of the priestess herself, it isn’t going to look much like the original. I’ve only used the original one as a model. Since I don’t have blues or greens (yet), it’s all going to be earth tones.

Adding details

Nature fantasy painting, detail of leaf and vine.

I’m adding a lot more details into this painting than I did to the original drawing. Perhaps I’m overdoing it a bit. But it’s also a learning endeavor for me. I’m figuring out what works and what doesn’t work- with my concepts, the paints themselves, and techniques I just want to experiment on. With the birds of prey, I don’t want to experiment so much. With nature fantasy, who’s going to know the difference? I get to create the whole thing, whether or not there’s anything to compare with in reality.

Here’s some leaf and vine detail:

The Horror of Painting Faces

I have never successfully even drawn a face of a human that I thought looked remotely human. So there’s nothing to explain the fiasco that resulted when I decided to put a face on this water priestess. I don’t know what got into me! After a full day of hearty laughter, to the point where my stomach was sore, I put it to bed. The next morning, I finally made the little change that helped a lot. Here’s the progression so you can share in the laughter. I’m happy with it now.

Painting faces is hard! After a few attempts, I got this nature fantasy figure tolerable.
It doesn’t help that the face is so small. The whole painting is only 16 x 12″, so the face is a pretty tiny area to work with. But I like it a lot better by the end, once she got her makeover. Don’t you?

Lots More Work to Do

I’m going to keep working on faces, and it’s a different experience to paint from imagination rather than a photograph. Follow me on Instagram if you want to get the very latest. The links are below. I post not only my nature fantasy art, but whatever art I’m working on it to Instagram and then come here to fill in the gaps when I get the time. I also post photos from around the house. Once a painting is finished, I upload it to my online gallery (this is where you can see all of my art). To see the nature fantasy art I have available currently, the link is below.

https://shop.wildozark.com/product-category/art/nature-fantasy/

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https://www.youtube.com/@wildozark


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