Many years ago I worked as a photoshop artist at a big photography studio owned by a giant corporation in Manhattan. They wanted to expand the studio business into compositing and digital effects, so they had me create a bunch of portfolio pieces to show their clients.
One idea I had was to create an elaborate "Greek Mythology" scene incorporating ruined temples and magical creatures along with scantily clad models (this being the commercial art world, no consideration was given to justifying the sexual politics involved).
We staged a number of shoots for the project using professional models and elaborate props, and actually got it pretty far along before I was transferred over to a different arm of the empire (which is another story I'll tell when my NDA finally runs out).
Years later, I used some of the outtakes from one of the shoots to create a few of what I called my "Reflection" pieces, which were photos I distorted to the point that they became almost unrecognizable. I wanted to see if they would still carry some sense of their original meanings (which is why I used "loaded" sources with violence or nudity).
One of these pieces wound up resembling a sort of half deer/half woman chimera rooted in a fleshy substrate, which I thought was cool given the magical Arcadian vibe we'd been after in the original shoot. But, as always with my digital work, I wanted it to look more "painterly" (see my previous posts here for more on this topic), so I waited for the digital "painting filters" to get good - which they (eeeek!) certainly have.
Here's a detail:
