This week Strawberry came up with a wonderful new challenge: ‘create an image in Second Life that has  a surreal feel for you.’

First thing I thought was: YAY! and then I thought..hang on..isn’t Second Life one big surreal image and environment? For me it is, no matter how real the friendships, contact with others and feelings are, in the end this virtual world is one big surreal picture. Not that that is a bad thing, not at all. I love it!
It is, as I have said many times, my escape from real life – which is at certain moments as surreal as SL, but that is a different story.

This challenge however made me think, as I wanted to create a new image for this rather than pull one from my Flickr. And there it goes. Whenever I feel I ‘have to’ create or ‘need’ to come up with something for a challenge or whatever, I can not. I do not consider myself an artist, not in SL and not in RL. I am merely an amateur in both worlds, but I do enjoy creating images in SL a lot and in RL I love to draw. But it just has to happen. I can not ‘create’ on command.

Now there is a funny difference many of you probably do not know: my RL ‘art’ is far from Surrealism. I like to draw with pencils (black, soft) on aquarel paper (because of the texture) and mostly I make portraits. Of animals. My favourites are Chimpansees and Orang Utans.  To give an example, this is one of the portraits I made (apologies for the bad quality of the picture, I took it with my iPhone and the drawing is framed in glass):

Not quite surrealism and not quite similar to what I do in SL is it? The weird thing is, I cannot draw surrealistic. It is just not in me!

But my Second Life is surreal, every day. My 3 most used appearances are my main ‘human’ Caity’ who is sporting Demon Hands and Elf Ears as daily wear. Then there is my favourite Doll Avatar and of course my male alt, who wears a mask to cover his face. All three are far from realistic and that is how I like them best.

Now back to Berry’s challenge, before I keep rambling on and on!  This image is my entry, and its title is: ‘The Party Is Over’, I hope you like it!