I want to talk about this image.

I've had it on my HDD for years now. I started it back in 2017 and then put it away for some reason. I don't really remember why now, but every time I've gone back to it, I've sat there unable to really think of what to add to it.

There's something about this image that captures my imagination. It looks, to me, like a looming dark fortress you can se in the distance as you walk along the shore of a foggy lake. The way the clouds lay heavy in the sky, the way the beginnings of foliage barely tell me what they are...

I could absolutely draw that. Realize that. I could do it without much trouble, but...

Something would be lost in translation. Every time I've tried to add detail to it, to flesh it out, complete it, something about it is fundamentally changed. It no longer conveys the same sense of mystique to me, the same surreal feeling of seeing a place half-there. My meddling only makes it more solid, more tangible, and robs it of its sense of ominous surrealism.

I think, every time we draw, we create these little snapshots. I don't think we think much about them, because we're still in the whole process of getting the thing on the page to resemble the thing in our minds. But sometimes, when I stop to look at my progress so far, I see something in the work itself as it sits right then, and I think, even though it might not be what I set out to create, what my work says to me in that moment has value just as well.

And sometimes, I want that work to speak for itself, and I don't want to force it to become something else.

(Really hoping I don't get slammed by mods for putting this in the art portal, haha.)