Surrender - holoz0r's work for the Laura Lemons Contest

I can't enter my own contest, but I can create art work in the same spirit as said contest. Plus, the three finalists, @kaylinart, @mattclarke, and @juliakponsford have put in remarkable efforts, month after month. I chose the theme of Surrender for the last round because I knew it would challenge the entrants.

It is also a word that to me, triggers moments of weakness, where we might overcome our more rational minds and in a moment, surrender to a thought that is our last. This is my entry, and with most of my visual work, I'm not the happiest about how the visual in my mind's eye made its way to fruition, but that's part of the artistic journey, surrendering to the moment when you know a piece is just "right".

The base image is a photograph I took of a friend many, many years ago as part of another university project I was working on. There's not a lot of manipulation actually going on here, the veil was in the original image, and really; all I've done is play around with a crop, some layer masks, and a bit of blurring.

I normally work with darker colours, and high contrast pieces, and really wanted to create an image that was almost pure white, but it wasn't working. Between white, statesque textures and slightly less white statesque shadows, there wasn't enough contrast for me to discern a powerful image.

The winner for the contest will be announced in the next forty-eight hours, where they'll walk away with 10 STEEM, and a delegation of 50 SP for three months! The view is to run an annual contest in Laura's memory to raise awareness of what an excellent steemian she was; and to commemorate her forever on the blockchain. I will never forget her.