I owe a certain beta-Muse thanks and praise to the Heavens...

[red_satin_doll]

...for her time, feedback, ideas, generosity, patience, gentle wit, marvelous penetrating insights and for her keen Eye (intangible, unexplanable, indispensible) and above all, for helping guide me to my very first 1st place award (!!) as well as 3rd place and Most Creative honors at slayerstillness Challenge 43; as well as a Mod's Choice's Award at whedon_elite Challenge 116.

That particular beta-Muse would be named velvetwhip, of course; and I dare say she will deny her fabulousness; don't believe her for a second if she does. I've been beta for my friends who are writers for years, but this time I've gotten to be on the other side of the give-and-take and it's a rich and and fulfilling working relationship.

            Teasers for awards banners inside.

And it's an entirely mutual one; I've been "special pencil" for her marvelous Joyce-centric fic Answering Prayers, set in the summer between S2 & 3, and our many discussions on Buffy, Joyce and Giles during that period no doubt provided additional inspiratiion for my Helpless artwork. I love the cross-currents between us as two artists in different but complimentary media.

Congratulations to sweet_lyri,  tempertemper , and starry_night  - three of my favorite fan artists and wonderful people, they are all well-represented in my userpic gallery - for their wins at slayerstillness and whedon_elite. And may we have a big round of applause for tempertemper's phenomenal banners?  I just about died of happiness when I saw these:

   

Two of my goals for the year: Win first place at slayerstillness - check. (Best Color, I've got my sights on you.) Earn more awards banners made by other artists by which i mostly mean tempertemper - double check. And these are simply beyond perfect aren't they? Artwork like this makes me wonder why there aren't awards categories for "Best Awards Banner" because these truly are works of art.

The direct inspiration for my first place winner was clockwork_hart1's gorgeous Buffy S4 icons (#11-12) and her experimentation with light, blurs and motion. For the other icon I started with Buffy's profile in the hotel room where Kralik has taped multiple polaroids of Joyce, then did multiple versions layering her with Giles, Joyce and Kralik, inside her silhouette but ended up chosing this one. I really like how the patterns of the library books and the polaroids echo one another, sublty hinting at and reinforcing the connection between the two.

Banners by tempertemper. (Now if only I can get her and other banner makers to remember to sign their work...)

I stayed with Helpless for my whedon_elite entries when I finished the SS set and realized there were other images I still wanted to play with.  Thank you fassy for the Mod's Choice honor! The specific inspiration for this icon and my Cordy one were kwritten's Artist Choice set for Round 7 of btvsats20in20, "The Freshman (Buffy)" although I've admired her way with delicate layers and textures for three years. Once again velvetwhip deserves a thunderous round of applause for her beta-Muse-ings:

Banner by yours truly; check out the banners for starry_night and sweet_lyri here.  The base image is a photo I took a couple of afternoons ago of daffodils in my yard because they especially suited the "Springtime" theme of the challenge.

Comments

[feliciacraft.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!!

I remember voting for you for the Springtime image. It's absolutely gorgeous. Love the Helpless artworks too--they pack so much emotional impact. Wonderfully done!

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for the kind words and the vote (which I saw, by the way)! I'm so glad that the Helpless icons conveyed the emotions I'd hoped to capture. It's such a significant episode and Sarah is absolute aces conveying Buffy's anguish.