The Snow Queen.

The fairy tale "The Snow Queen" was written by Hans Christian Andersen. I've always liked the story, and I've been meaning to do a portrait of the queen for a few years now. She's a strange character, living alone in an ice palace, and she kidnaps a boy named Kay, and brings him to her palace to live.

In the middle of the vast, empty halls of snow, was a frozen lake, cracked into a thousand shards. She tells Kay he can never leave until he is able to spell out the word "Eternity" using the shards of ice.

As she is driving him to her palace in her sleigh for the first time, she kisses him on the forehead, a kiss colder than ice, which went straight through to his heart. "Now you must have no more kisses," she said, "or else I should kiss you to death."