The background of this image began as a photo collage, I then painted over it leaving some of the photo for texturing, especially around the trees. The rabbit, Alice, dragonfly and bottle were painted.
My photo reference for the trees can be found here:
Old tree by *Goblin-stock
http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=old%20tree#/d1x637n
Mortan Bay Fig by ~kayne-stock
http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=bay+fig#/d1eagd
My own photo referance for the leaves can be seen here:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22539651@N05/5556537661/" title="leaves by wordrevel, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5097/5556537661_b65dc08ffa.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="leaves" /></a>
To create the tree in the background I followed this tutorial:
http://alfoart.com/green_landscape_beanstalk_1.html
Alice was inspired by the illustration by Sir John Tenniel's from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice and the Cheshire Cat:
http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/BE064944.html
And lastly, I began this image because of a poem I had written a while ago, that I just recently stumbled on:
Untitled poem from April 3rd
To struggle between the daylight and the night,
On a day that wept with rain, and jealous of the sun,
Has faded to a veil of stars,
Adorned like some concubine in guilty diamonds.
Such beautiful miseries,
Such passions that make the angels weep,
And pluck their tangled strings with sour envy.
Such wants,
Come crawling through the darkness,
Like a half starved hound,
Who had long ago been lost in a barren place.
Limping to my door and lowly whining,
The hound says that all debts have been erased,
And opening the door with all of its groaning,
Upon the hinges so long unmoved, uninspired,
The night was like the world beyond the mirror,
Where the rabbit had so enticed the child.
