Leila

Made for Hannaliten, for the Blackest Nights Darkest Dreams swap.
Hanna's list had some fabulous things on it, and I tried to incorporate them into the piece - owls, moonlight scenes (with dead trees), skulls - especially sugar skulls and purple.

Leila (whose name means born at night, which I thought was awesomely appropriate) started out as a FS Fluttershy. Wings were removed and the hole was patched up.
Airbrushed in one of my favourite new paints, the metallic purple fades into a slightly darker gradient. She did have black gradients at one point, but I didn't like the way she looked, so I made them a nice dark purple instead. Her face was airbrushed in a warm white colour, as I didn't want the white of the eyes to blend into the white of the face paint.

Her day of the dead sugar skull makeup was handpainted (after I sneakily discovered what kind of flowers Hanna liked best) and I included a diamond in the design because she loves a bit of bling.... and purple bling? Too awesome! I struggled for a good week with eye shapes and designs - the eyes I wanted to use just looked terrible with the DotD styled flowers I had in mind, so in the end I went with big eyes and a simple flower design around them (which had a tonne of detail, but the crystals managed to cover most of that). I wanted the whole thing to feel very Day of the Dead-ish, but with a bit of a twist to suit Hanna's personal preferences.

For her rump symbols, I wanted a level of symmetry, but to make each one different so Hanna had options for how to display her. I thought about lots of different ways to do it, but settled on the cameo idea, because it seemed so classy and elegant.... and theres a touch of dark, old worldly charm about a cameo in my mind
Both sides were experimental as far as the backgrounds went - the tree side was my attempt at a hand painted, fading gradient sort of thing. I LOVE the way the tree turned out, too, though it did obliterate much of my carefully planned background
On the other side, I painted an owl. Who happens to be purple.
The background for that one was a bit different - it doesn't gradiate as much as the tree side, but I painted clouds - and I really love how they turned out too!! The owl is sitting on a skull, just being a bit creepy... and I love how well it turned out. I've been really focusing on doing better detail painting lately, and I am really really happy with how it came out. Pics were a tad hard to get of both cameos, but her dA collage has a couple of closeups. Interesting fact - the owls eyes and feet are the only bits of 'other colour' on this piece ^.^ Everything else is purple, white or black!
Both cameos were sealed with a couple of layers of really thickly applied triple thick, then the frames were sculpted. Originally I planned on having these incredibly ornate, swirly frames... but that just wasn't working for me, so instead they are fairly simple frames, imbedded with purple and black crystals. That was then sealed with gloss.

The hair is Twilight, Amethyst, Sour Grapes, Ultraviolet, Sugar Plum, Deadly nightshade, kiss of death, black magick and 2 shades of custom dyed Starlight (all from Dollyhair, with custom dying by me ^.^ ) That was twisted and pinned in place, with the rest left long and flowing so Hanna can display her facing either way. I also wrapped some purple silk roses through the front of her do, again in a very DotD style (but since the marigolds traditionally featured in these designs are near on impossible to find here, I substituted them for roses instead).

So all sculpting is done with Magic sculpt. Eyes and cameos are sealed with triple thick, face paint is sealed with matte modpodge, while her body and frames are sealed with modpodge gloss.
Crystals are swarovski's in shades of purple and some black.