They are from greek mythology, they are a type of nymph connected to trees, each dryad has thier own tree, and though a dryad cannot be killed directly, if thier tree were cut down, it would kill them.
This reminds me of something funny, DM. I was cruising about the internet the other day and came across these things one could buy to attach to their tree to make it look like it has human type features. Maybe that was the idea to make the trees into these dryads. It looked pretty funny and was not too cheap to buy a pair of eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth that all looked like the same texture as the tree. I had to take a double take look when I first saw it - I thought they were selling the whole tree - now shipping on that would have been something.
Ahh yes I have seen those, though I would say those faces are more the Green Man, than Dryad.
Tonight I was at this sort of dollar store - actually called '5 Below', and I found this cool book on fantasy - "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fantasy", so I bought it, thinking of this thread. I noticed one page devoted to the 'Green Man'. I will have to read up and educate myself about fantasy and the dark arts. The book looks quite interesting. I also bought another book on King Arthur...hey, the price was right. This has some of the Pre-Raephalites in it, so thought I could look up the paintings for the other group.
I recently discovered a new artist, and thought I would share some of his more fantasy styled works here becasue I really like them. The artist is John Blumen
I like the dracula and others I have just viewed on his website. I copied most to put into my artist's files. Love to collect these. When I get enough I will burn them to a DVD and view them on the TV.
John Blumen ~ Fallen
Here is a cute wizard A fairy - I forget the artist.... maybe Alphonse Mucha.
ouuu...those are interesting. I like the mermaid on the cresent moon. I love cresent moons. Like the last ones coloring - all earth tones..nice. Dark Muse, I thought you had posted something after my wizard. Did you remove something? Maybe I am thinking of another of these groups.