wishes, redux

Revisiting a painting from last year. This one has always been my family's favorite, so we're going have a large high end print made up and framed. I've always liked the story playing out in the image, but I was never very happy with the look of the setting or the fish, so I've given them a bit of a makeover - trying for a better looking back/mid/foreground and a more magickal looking fishie

And along the way, I experimented with making him a girl. If you follow my art at all, you know I mostly paint males, and I've been frustrated by how images of males never seem to gain the popularity that images of females do. But as bishie as this boy is, he makes a surprisingly butch looking girl, and it seemed fundementally wrong for me to change his gender in the hopes of having more people like the image. So an elf boy he remains.

edit 4/16/10: Wow, thanks for the DD on this, I'm so honored! And thank you, archanN for featuring it.