ol' knight d'vine

Nobody knew if the knight had once been a noble warrior who got lost in the forest of Mir and stumbled upon an ancient coven of druids, or was originally one of the magical forest folk who grew enamored of the armored men who occasionally entered the woods in hunt of some supposedly dangerous creature or other. A popular tale held that she was a dryad who fell in love with a human templar, but unable to leave her tree to be with him, could only watch as he aged and passed away, following which she donned his armor to continue his patrol.

What they did know was that she had always been watching over the forest, as long as the oldest storyteller could remember the oldest storyteller of his age having remembered. It was a rare day that she'd be sighted, a distant figure atop a majestic stag, but the villagers knew that if ever they wandered too deep into the forest they could always call for help, and a trail of vines would lead them back home: but the trees of that lush forest were off-limits to any woodcutter who valued his life.

As the bards sang: "Good ol' Knight D'Vine, they'd say; ne'er let a man lose his way. The forest greens his to enjoy, so long as not a tree he should destroy."

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Christmas-art for the year: Merry Christmas in advance, all of you lovely people! This was borne of a twist of inspiration between woodwose and bad puns from hearing "O Holy Night" perhaps once too many. 

Two rules I tried to keep to for this piece: less fine detail, and to work all over the painting instead of just finishing one part at a time. The latter's pretty tiring, since I have to keep thinking of what bit to work on next. Still, for being a silly bit of pun-art and not particularly spectacular--and being a total pain, because I roughed it out, was halfway through, and realized I had no idea how to draw armor. Or backgrounds with perspective, for that matter--I'm actually fond of the piece, and that hasn't happened in a long while! So hurrah.

Photoshop CS5.