It would have been nice to see when the deadline for entry was. I never even saw this up for voting, and I looked about 12 hours ago. Also, can you remind us about the size limits for pictures? Or repost a link to the guidelines. I have trouble logging in to this site and have no apparent access to anything other than the entered pictures.

Thank you Hanabi

Good one!

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....LOVE IT. Love everything about it. :-)

Lots of really good entries in this!

I REALLY like this except for the stems. They don't seem match the flowers and it is distracting. The perspective of the vase is also a little off.

One last comment. Your figurine is also someone else's art unless you made it yourself.

I also have doubts about some works at times. It is sometimes difficult to decide whether something is just a copy and paste of someone elses art or actually a manipulation, especially when the artist is using creative commons oil paintings like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Davinci or the Swing by Pierre Auguste Cot. But as you know, many of us have often used creative commons oil paintings in our work. I have done it myself. You have also done it. Is that stealing another artists work? I don't think so, as long as the art is in the free creative commons category. If we really wanted our work to be unique, we really ought to change those paintings enough to make them look different and not so obviously recognisable or just use them as inspiration to create our own unique versions with different models maybe? I also made the mistake myself of thinking a photo of a fish was a manipulation but it was not. I asked about it and I actually learned about a sea creature I never knew existed in reality. I tend to think its OK to use anything that is offered as creative commons. Other artists would not offer their work on places like Pixabay or Deviantart if they did not expect it to be used in manipulations. Even when photos are unmanipulated, they are ultimately also someone elses work unless we actually took the photo ourselves so even when using creative commons photos, we are using other peoples works. The current photo source is Olgas work and we can either copy and paste the flower into a scene where it is still recognisable as the original source which has not been changed or manipulated very much at all or we can actually manipulate it by transforming it with warp tools and changing colors and all kinds of things so it doesnt actually look like the original flower any more. There is a vast difference between actually manipulating a source photo and just copy and pasting it into a scene.

Obviously your definition of creativity is quite different from mine. So here we are. I looked up your posted sources from the previous 2 contests and evidently they were created by you since most of them are obviously not unmanipulated photos. Anyway I respect your work however you prefer to do it. And btw I always use only my own photos, but I wouldn't dream of restricting others in that way. I like to see all kinds of creations.

I respectfully disagree. There are millions of images free for the taking on the net. Why should I waste my time creating a dragon if I can find the perfect one on Shutterstock et al? If you can show me the line between manipulated and untouched or between chopping and painting I might concede the point. IMHO if this site doesn't encourage creativity and innovation, which to me means using ANY available tools, it will join all the other sites that refused to come into this century. All the contests will be won by the same few people, and everyone else will get bored and go elsewhere.