Screwed up – no longer a Contest Entry

This is WAS going to be my entry for the Winter In The Woods contest [link] being held by but I just noticed that I SCREWED UP the stock!! Somehow I had copied the stock of the window/entrance into my working file and named it by Stormsorceress but apparently when I went to link and credit the stock it wasn’t there and when I searched it out I found out it was Elandria’s stock. What a moron I am!!! Anyway, I don’t think I’ll revise the piece just to enter the contest seeing how my time is limited these days. Oh well.

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Inspiration & Title

I had such a completely different idea for this contest than what I actually ended up with!! I had visions of an all-white winter scene with only 1 thing in colour which was going to be a bird. Boy how this strayed from that concept!!

Course being a contest there were requirements on stock use… oh my how hard to use such amazing stock from (damn her for them all being so beautiful it was difficult to choose!!) Lol But I had a hard time figuring out what stock to use from because I had already chosen the background image of snowy trees so I couldn’t use her forest stocks. I was going to use a different stock of a building but after extracting it I decided it didn’t look good in the scene and so I decided on this window (uhh…no I just discovered for myself that the window is from Elandria!!). Which was a great change in choice I think (or would have been if I hadn’t just disqualified myself from the contest!) lol

The rest of the image just came together without a real plan (yes obviously 2am manipulating can manipulate your ability to think clearly or keep your stock references clear!). At first, everything was in colour and quite stunning but it didn’t look wintery enough that way so I dropped everything to black and white except the focus (which also made the 2 stock requirements appear even more prominent). I put in the butterflies and kept them coloured because I didn’t think dead butterflies was a concept I wanted here.

The title emerged when I took a good look at what ended up on the screen and particularly in the expression on Elandria’s face. It just seemed to me that she while she’s facing us and seemingly wishing for Spring to come, it’s actually appearing right behind her without her knowing. To me it felt like a bit of a departure from the Winter In The Woods theme since she’s dreaming of leaving winter for warmer days but then I realized that’s what many of us actually dream of during February! So it seemed to make sense.

Hope you enjoy. I’m quite pleased how this turned out! Ok except that I noticed I fucked up the stock and didn’t meet the requirements by not having stock by Stormsorceress in there! Oopsy!

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Stock Provided by:

Female || Window/entrance covered in vines


StockXchng – Author: Vimark
|| Spring-like background in the window/entrance || Actual stock link here

Visipix.Dynalias.Com - Userid=811721678
|| Wintery treed background || Actual stock link here

StockXchng – Author: Biewulf
|| Candles || Actual stock link here

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Brushes & Tubes Provided by:

Ack! I downloaded the butterfly tubes and sparkle tubes years ago and I don’t have a resource! I so hate not being able to credit the providers but I couldn’t not use these beauties! If you know who might have created these Paintshop tubes please let me know.