Surreal gothic scene of a hooded figure — AI art by @beastxyz

When I first saw the theme of "Black&White", one of my first idea was to do a piece around solitude, as I thought a monochrome visual would bring out the vibe of loneliness quite aptly. While brainstorming for the setting, I was particularly inspired about something that came from a discussion with ChatGPT - "think about black and white in a way that if colors were being added to the visual, it actually reduces the visual impact rather than improves it." So I changed my initial setting of a woman sitting alone under a tree on an island/vast empty space to one inside a coffee cup. While it looks whimsical, I am happy that the black color in the coffee adds to the hopelessness of the solitude theme that I was looking for, which I think a blue sea would not have been able to otherwise accomplish. Finally, I decided to make the woman based on an optical illustration that I have seen before - if viewed from another angle, it actually shows another woman in black together with the woman. I thought it adds the narrative of "You are never alone in your journey" and gives the solitude theme a little more positivity. I was one of those that suddenly realised that the deadline for this challenge was only one day instead of the usual two, so I was scrambling to complete it within the final hour. Given more time, I would have fixed some of the slops (e.g. the white hand) and experimented with some other ideas I have in my head (like stretching more of the image space for the coffee, inserting a wooden spoon/oar etc). But I guess I am happy with the final end product, and a placing of 18th out of 55 entries is a good enough result for it.

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