My first time doing a CHOW assignment at ConceptArt.org. Topic was "Queen's Consort," which played directly into an idea I'd had the night before so I had to paint it.

See... I started life as a theater major. It's been my dream since I was probably about 14 years old to direct (or art direct) a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's my favorite Shakespeare play (probably for some obvious reasons) and I've never seen a version of it that I felt really explored all the possibilities in it, visually.

I got to costume a stage production of it in college (where I also got to play Hippolyta), but our director had absolutely NO vision for how he wanted it costumed. First he wanted the Faeries dressed like rock stars then like pop stars then like an English garden party. It was all over the place, and all my ideas for costumes pretty much ended up in the gutter and the final was cobbled together with a small budget and a lot of just finding things in thrift stores and sewing on some leaves.

It was really a disappointment.

Off and on over the years I've toyed with drawings of various Midsummer characters, but I've never really solidified my vision of how I'd do it (given an unlimited budget). This is probably the first time I've really nailed down precisely how I'd want a character to look, if I were to actually stage the play.

I think if I were to do it, I'd set it in the Southern US (Florida or Georgia, probably, maybe Louisiana) in the swamp, sometime between the colonial period and the civil war. The Faeries would be very nature inspired, drawing some of their costume from the fashion of the humans they toy with.

This, obviously, is how I would imagine King Oberon. Tall, stately, regal, arrogant, lazy, vain, and a bit of a jerk when it comes right down to it.

And before anyone says anything, while he's a King, he's also quite definitely Queen Titania's consort. I've always felt it's pretty obvious she wields the real power in the relationship and Oberon is a the "scorned" lover out for revenge.