The Four Nymphs at Midnight

by Anthea, age 13
(Sydney, NSW, Australia)

When people hear the word nature, most conjure up beautiful landscapes or plants in their heads. I tried to create something special and different by having my theme as 'goddesses', since I am interested in mythology especially Greek and Roman legends. The nymphs are based on the four elements of nature (wind, fire, water and earth). The fairy friends are meeting at midnight in a forest clearing.
While the earth spirit is usually a dwarf of brown earthy skin, my one is a nymph to make it look like an elf, who appears at midnight when the moon is full. I chose green for her hair to represent the beautiful green of grass and vines, the reason why her hair ends in vines. Her eyes are brown like bark while her dress is inspired by the flower called Pink Dahlia. I used dark green for her shadows on her skin to give it an earthy feel. Since plants and trees are solid, she is the more human-looking of the four.
The air spirit, a Sylph, is the hardest to draw since air is invisible. I used green for the winds, gold for the clouds and silver for her skin because I want her skin to be white while green and gold are symbolic colours of the wind. Her hair is black to blend in with the dark forest since you can’t see air. Her arms are replaced with wings, for birds and angels, while the two tails are to represent butterflies. She is my favourite of the four.
The fire spirit has body and hair of fire since it is a fire spirit, which is usually a salamander, which I thought was ugly so I made it a girl on fire instead. I thought it was hard to make the gold, yellow, orange and red blend together but it looked good in the end. I was going to draw her burning up the forest but decided not to. She was the longest to draw out of the four since I can’t decide where to put her but in the end I chose to make her turning around to look at a spying shadow in the trees.

Finally, the water spirit, an undine, was inspired by the Water Nymph monster in the game Okamiden. I was planning to make her fully-water but decided not to do it to retain a human-like appearance. I thought it was going to look like a Sylph at first but it liked like a whirlpool raising out of nowhere in the end. She was the one I thought was the most beautiful since I didn’t believe I could make the water look like water. Some of her dark blue hair is still material.
If there was one thing I wouldn’t want to lose it would be art. To me, art is something to portray my feelings and what I see to the world. It makes reality much prettier and shows something that words alone cannot portray. I loved drawing since I was little and I drew for my friends and families as presents. I believe that people are not valuing the true beauty of nature and I hope one day that through art, people can see that we are losing something we can’t put a price on. I would like to dedicate my work to my parents for supporting my dream to be an artist and I hope that I can show my gratitude through my piece.