The real inspiration was not the quote; this was simply made on request. However, the quote accurately represents how I feel when it comes to making "horror" images. I don't think you'll find a single gruesome image in my gallery. This is not because I don't like gore and death, but more because I find death beautiful, and that is how I display it when working with images.


   my thoughts ;;
     I rather like this. Almost all of the time was spent on the horse. The background was nice enough to begin with that I didn't see any reason to go changing it, not when I wanted the focus on the horse.

   work stats ;;
     I don't quite remember everything, but I'll try. A total of about twelve hours was spent on this image, eleven of those on the horse alone.

The horse had be cut, of course. Then the bone was added to the face. I use multiple layers to do this, and had to make some huge adjustments to the bone as it wasn't the skull of a Friesian to begin with. Instead of leaving it just white, I decided to add in scar tissue and some leftover veins. These were all painted in by hand, a total process of about four-five hours. Most of that work is hidden now, but I have the "non-forelock covered" images if anybody wishes to see them.

Horse was given mane, tail, forelock, feathers... all done by me. Smudged horse, and that was about it. The hair also took a very long time. Overall, the total horse did take about eleven hours, and I don't know why. I spent a lot of time just repositioning some stuff, trying different ideas, and finally settling on what you see here.

Added horse to the background, played around with blending in the feet. Painted in some blowing snow. Painted in some snowflakes. Painted in some wispy fog-type stuff to match the background better. Adjusted the colors, and mainly the curves. Added on text and border.



   credits ;;
     =SalsolaStock, sheyne @ flickr, sundstrom @ sxc