I’ve been painting pretty girls and cute creatures for so long now that when I stumbled across the incredible Loopy Boopy art dolls a couple of weeks ago, I felt a rush of inspiration and switched to sketching and painting nothing but creepy girls since. I *love* her work and have put an original doll at the top of my Christmas list for next year. Now I just have to try to be good this year…

The first girl I painted was based on this particular doll – Danielle. I went back and forth when I started painting her, wanting to capture her image exactly as is (because I think she’s fantastically creepy and perfect and haunting), then realizing that her creator, Colleen Downs, might not appreciate that so much. I weakly attempted to make her more like one of my own girls instead of an exact copy, but because it’s soooo clear where the inspiration came from, I can’t help thinking my Danielle is just a watered-down version of the awesomeness that is the Loopy Boopy original.

I’m forwarding this post to Colleen (did I mention she’s incredibly talented? *grin*), so hopefully she’ll weigh in. She creates such whimsical creatures I may have to ban myself from her sites so I don’t try to paint every single one of them!