Cleopatra and the Serpent

This is my entry for the "Ancient Egypt" contest hosted by feline-icitfeline-icity.deviantart.com/

I have found that entering contests sends me in a good direction as far as inspiration goes. This is the longest I have ever spent on a digital painting and I hope it really shows. It took FOREVER. I used a stock photo as the base so its part painting part photo manipulation work, the dress, the jewelry, the snake (all the way down to his scales) were painted in. I am trying to use less and less fancy brushes and instead try to rely on improving my technique. The background uses a stock texture though (see links and credits below). There is also a texture on the fabric of the dress from my personal collection.

I chose to do the older story of Cleopatras demise where she is bitten on the arm as opposed to Shakespeare's version where she is bitten on the breast. Also some older accounts say it was an Egyptian Cobra, others say it was an asp. This is more of the latter.

Model: mmb-stock (nude) mmb-stock.deviantart.com/art/N…

Background texture is a combination of painting and this stock image from dreamstime: www.dreamstime.com/vintage-dra… © Stephanie Swartz | Dreamstime.com

to read more about Cleopatra: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatr…

Other pieces in this series:

Nefertiti solocosmo.deviantart.com/art/N…

Hatshepsut solocosmo.deviantart.com/art/H…

For High Quality prints (sold WITH permission of my stock model) of my artwork, pocket mirrors and cards please visit my etsy shop found here ---> www.etsy.com/shop/solocosmo DISCOUNT PRINTS FOR DA MEMBERS (10% off) - use the code DEVIANT when checking out.

Please respect my copyright on this artwork, please do not use without permission!
© 2010 Jessica Grundy
All Rights are Retained by the Artist (me).