Guests of Faeries

This is my entry for Sabin's contest on Gaiaonline.
I'm right now finishing my second entry for Sam, but as this one was done since few days, and that I'm now sure that I won't change anything else, I post it ^ ^

This is Sabin and Samantha, as the two characters were from the victorian area I decided to "invite" them in my Changeling Court, the Opera Garnier in Paris. (wich was probably very young at this time, as the palace was inaugurated in 1875 )
But as it's for a contest, I tried to stay accurate, and I kept myself from adding fairies, glowings lights and ivy everywhere ...

The background... Let talk a bit about this, took me around 8 hours of drawing and painting with my tablet over a photo that was taken by
For the very first time, I totally deleted the photo at the end of the pic. (Most of the time I keep it with a bit of opacity because my drawing sucks without... But this time no, the photo is not here, just my own background)
I'm quite proud about this point ^ ^

About the character themselve I wanted a more "polished" effect than what I usually do, so I took a lot of time on the skins... 'Even if finally it doesn't show that much...
I tried to erase a bit some part of the original sketch, and I'm quite surprised about how it looks, even if I must confess that I prefer to keep the sketch at the end...
It's just that this particular pic looked better without ^ ^

So here it is....
A long long pic, quite an expreiment in fact.
But that's what contest are fun for ^___^

I hope it will please you, and you can cross some fingers with me if you want ^___^