Plans for a new painting series

When I daydream that I will actually have the time to carry out one of my ideas, I tend to imagine painting. Or I should say, images in my head that I would like to execute in one way or another. The funny thing is I see these images in time: moving, or my perspective moving around them, giving them a 3-d feel. It's hard to explain. It's also hard to translate into a finished artwork, because a moving image means I can't exactly memorize it as it is, the vision is always morphing or changing.

One Series I have been wanting to create is the a series of figures that are being taken over by an element. The images here are for earth. "Being taken over" is probably a bad description. They are not really moving toward or away from the element in question they are half element, half human (or half figure). This is a multilayered idea: I wanted the opportunity to take my drawings and make them more permanent (pencil and paper do not seem like they will survive to me), and I wanted an opportunity to marry some styles and paint from my head in the same way I draw from my head (as opposed to a model or reference).

Shown above is the original drawing (and detail), which I liked a lot and so I wanted to record it before I messed it all up with nonsense. I'm offerring you all a close up so you can scrutinize my drawing style. When I was in highschool, studying drawing I would draw every last detail and it would take forever. Great results, but it made me hate the thought of drawing because it was so boring and labor intensive. I have lost my patience and now do this quicker sketchy style, which to me has more "AhA!" moments. Lovely lines that surprise me, making me look at the piece and think, "Wow, I did that?" Plus it is a lot more expressive. I'm not trying to make everything perfect, and because I'm a little lax on the location of body parts, things become a little more elongated, angular, etc. It's also due to the fact that I left my hand move through it's natural rotation more, being to lazy to pick it up and move it. It all works out in the end.