Birds and butterflies
Rivers and mountains she creates
But you'll never know
The next move she'll make
You can try
But it is useless to ask why
Cannot control her
She goes her own way

- Within Temptation, Mother Earth -

Second in my "Elements" series, and also one that I worked in my mind at night first, this is my illustration of "Earth". I went along a wider line for this one, focusing not only on the word "earth" itself (the color schemes I've picked should already remind of it), but also on other aspects of it, notably the one related to nature. (For a moment I had pondered doing it according to the Chinese elements, adding Wood and Metal to the basic four; I may still decide to do this at a later point, as this one could actually very easily be turned into Wood.)

I'm a little less satisfied about this one than I was about Fire, perhaps because of the colors - I don't like browns very much, and they systematically seem "dull" to me. I tried to keep it as vivid as possible though.

For this one too I used a slight visual reference from an old ad, mostly for certain anatomic "details". (I wish I had kept the whole pages each time, instead of just cutting the part of the image that caught my eyes; that makes it hard to remember where it came from.)

<sup>Related pictures:
+ The Fire Dance</sup>