This is for the 's February contest: "Ballet Couples". The ballet in this picture is Les Sylphides (not to be confused with La Sylphide), also known as Chopiniana. I had recently seen a live performance of La Sylphide at my school and the beauty of the ballet left a big impression on me so I decided to do my entry on this particular ballet.

The ballet itself has no story line and is, quote Wikipedia: "a romantic reverie" of a young poet dancing with Sylphs, forest spirits who in this ballet represent the ideal women. I chose Mytho and Ahiru as the characters for this pas de deux because in my mind Ahiru/Tutu has a very symbolic role for Mytho. She represents the feelings he's yearning to regain again, and in this way reminds me of the young man's search for an ideal in the ballet.

I finished this piece from beginning to end in 6 hours (probably because of the coffee I drank). I originally intended to only start this piece but instead of studying I ended up finding myself focusing all of my attention on it, so that even if I wanted to do something else I couldn't.

I actually intended to do something else with this piece but since I wanted to finish it today (so it won't haunt me later on and distract me again), for this contest I'm just submitting this part of the drawing. I'm actually thinking about making this into a Japanese DVD like image, with this picture in the foreground and a special background on a leather book cover-like base. If everything goes right I'll post that someday.

EDIT: As per 's critique, I've changed Ahiru's eyes a little so they're a tad more spaced apart now. Thanks for noticing that!