Twilight Unicorn

This was my entry for the "10 Commandments of Deviousness" contest - [link]

Winners shown here: [link]



Magic is everywhere. In Nature, in Love,
in Friendship, in Smiles.
It is part of every beautiful thing and experience.
It also exists in the Hearts, Souls and Minds of men and women that perceive it and believe in it.
They are, like I am, the Keepers of Magic and Magical Creatures. Only we can see them!

And that is why some people state
that "Unicorns & Magic do not exist".
But they do...Oh yes, they do!!

To prove it, I opened the "Secret Gate" that I keep
to show you a hidden place,
where an Unicorn runs free, surrounded by Magic!


Do you BELIEVE in Unicorns & Magic?





CREDITS
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Horse
~Jello88 -

Horn
~PSauburnchick12 - [link]

Backgrounds

*AshenSorrow -

~SephirothXer0-Stock -

*phatpuppy -

=Rezzan -


Castle
~UmbraDeNoapte-Stock - [link]

Leaves & Flowers, tree to the right:
purchased to *Paintedonmysoul @ [link] - Item Nr. 1417

Flowers, tree to the left and near river:
*Sammykaye1sStamps - [link]

Leaves, tree to the left & Flowers bottom left:
!lisaolson9293 - [link]

Owl:
*steppelandstock - [link]

Flowers at riverside:
~Uzelena - [link]

Grasses far on the pond:
*moonchild-ljilja - [link]

Lotus:
~Siluan-stock - [link]

Waterlilys:
*Drezdany-stocks - [link]

Brushes:
*redheadstock - [link]

*frozenstocks - purchased - [link]

~LoRdaNdRe - [link]


Thank you for providing the stocks that made it possible
for me to create this work!



Creation:



Details [link] and [link]

Process:
It all started when I saw that there was a challenge to prove the existance of Unicorns and Magic...
My friends know that I believe in Magic and Unicorns and Fairies and Elves and in all magical creatures! They have filled my life with joy and happiness since I was a little girl.

So I found a beautiful horse first and worked ours extracting the background and smudging the hair. Then I searched for a Unicorn Horn and changed it's shape a bit, and the color. I had the first background that would lead the landscape (the trees you see with leaves now, are the original trees in the first background). The other backgrounds were combined to provide light (a lot of them was masked), and the one with the trees I loved to add the magical forest of legends.

I enhanced colors with new layers and painting over them, using Gaussian Blur and Screen properties.

Then I added the water and masked everything but the pond you see.

Then I placed the flowers to the left, used one leaf to create all the leaves to the left and then started working with very tiny parts of the purchased flower to create the branches to the right.

The tools I used the most were to change colors (color balance and Hue) and exposure. Even yellow flowers were used (changing the hue).

The lotus were extracted and new flowers were placed, removing the others with the clone tool.

At the beginning I had a lady watching the scene, but I finally removed it. Some other details were also changed.

In sum, I did not count how many layers I had on the work, but there were many (imagine only creating the leaves of the trees, flower by flower in little pieces! It's all threaded flowers!! And then, matching and balancing each ...

It was nice to get inspired again after such a long time without having any ideas to work on
And - as usual - should you want to know anything about how I did something, feel free to ask. I'll be happy to help!


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Kindly featured by and

This work has been reposted at [link]