Fairybelle orchids and Eastern Gippsland waterdragons. Painter and wacom, and unfortunately I don't remember how long this took. Probably in the area of 100 hours.

 This painting is inspired by the rainforest area of the National Botanical Gardens in Canberra Australia. Our family often visits the gardens, and I've always loved the colourful (and surprisingly large!) waterdragons that wander free throughout the park. It's quite an experience to see these beautiful animals right next to you, and they seem quite uninterested in the humans wandering around their domain!

The rainforest walk is really spectacular, it follows a steep gully to a little trickling brook at the bottom, and all around are strangler figs and tropical trees festooned with deershorn ferny type plants and orchids.

 I didn't use ref for the landscape in the painting, I was more interested in getting the feel of the place rather than painting it directly. I did use personal reference to help with the water dragons, orchids, and butterflies!

This is a really huge file...painted more for my own enjoyment than anything else. It was a great experience working on this!