WET #34: A Snowflake's Chance... July 11, 1999 please click this image to view full-sized WET 34: A Snowflake's Chance... The image this week was an interesting (upside down because it was from Down Under) collection containing a photo of a dashing teddy bear dressed for flying a vintage plane, a realistic gear (or cog), the white word YAK, a white line drawing of a man's face, and an impressive fiery swirl and its mirror image. When I looked at the combination, I wondered what the teddy bear was dreaming about... And then it was obvious: Like Snoopy, he dreamed of flying through the air, ace pilot in his very own biplane. I wanted to cheer for him! Then reality hit, and I realized that he probably has little chance of it ever coming true. In fact, probably a snowflake's chance in....that hot place. Well, that's where my WET 34 offering comes in. Poor little bear, happily dreaming away, while behind him we can see what the odds really are! The parts of that flake closest to the fires are already wilting from the heat! I downloaded the .psp version of the original so that I could work on the layers separately. The gear, swirls, and teddy bear were not altered, except for resizing and adding a drop shadow to the bear. The outline face was copied and then pasted and rotated a little more each time to make an eight-sided shape (I know snowflakes don't have eight, but that's how this one worked out, okay? Fantasy can take license with reality. LOL) I experimented by shading it with a very translucent spray of gold, copied and pasted on itself as a layer, then blended at about 60% screen. The word yak was a challenge. I resized it, then used 2 shades of gold and one red tone to brush a woodgrain, lava, and 75 percent dither texture over it. Then I copied it and pasted it, flipping every other time, to create a grill-like effect. I hot-waxed this with a very pale peach for the final effect. Now it was a matter of restacking the layers. I made a new black background, adding 50 pixels of gold at the bottom for a base (windowsill?). I centered the gear in the exact middle of the black section, then centered the "snowflake" around the gear to combine them. Next I Added four fiery swirls on the black (and put teeny-tiny dream bears in their hollows). The grill went on next, all the way around to help hold back those hot swirls. Then I added a black and gold frame to hold the picture. The last layer to be added was that of the innocent teddy bear, sitting safely in front of the grilled window, happily looking out at us as he dreams of flying solo and being a hero someday. And totally unaware of what's happening behind his back. Sigh. I feel so sorry for that dreamer. He just isn't aware of reality at all. If he were, he'd realize his ambition is hopeless. But he doesn't know, and HOPE is a marvelous thing. It's the dreamers just like him who have done wonderful and marvelous things in our world because they didn't realize what they wanted "couldn't be done." So, Here's to you, little bear! Dream on! Miracles have happened, you know! :) Everything on this page was done in Paint Shop Pro 5, using only the original filters and functions supplied with the program.

This is a smaller version of the original image posted for us to use. Thank you!

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This image was created using Paint Shop Pro 5, especially for the WET #34 project.
It is my original creation based on the original WET image obtained on-line
through alt.binaries.comp-graphics.
Thank you!

5acreart@usa.net

All original graphics on this site
Copyright 1999
by Diane at
Five Acre Graphics