The Blue Castle seems to be L. M. Montgomery’s least-known book, but if you’re a fan of her work at all, it’s worth sniffing out a copy. The heroine, Valancy Stirling, goes through so many transformations that deciding just which version of her to portray was something of a challenge. I finally settled on a passage towards the end of the book, where an artist comes across Valancy in the woods and decides she so embodies the spirit of the forest that he simply must paint her (artists make great book characters, btw. They should turn up more often in novels. Just saying). There was a tempting description of how the portrait was meant to turn out, so in the end I worked off that.
A few progress shots:
The final painting:
