Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I suppose opening the new year by looking back at the old year is a bit at cross-purposes, but I can’t resist. I thought it might be fun to highlight some favorites that for one reason or another, I failed to highlight in 2024. I love this gorgeous picture from January. It’s called “Walk with Me” from Vee. She erases most of her picture, leaving the essentials. You just see her legs, the shadow tells you it’s a sunny day and there are the wildflowers along the path suggesting she’s enjoying some free time outdoors. In an interesting play on the rule of thirds, her subject fills one-third while white space fills two-thirds of the picture. It’s brilliant.
Aria Blackwood posted “I’ll Find Someone Like You” in February. I love the way the structural details of the building seem almost like lace in the silhouette, while the fronds of the pine trees look like feathers. The sun is setting behind the house, the light creating a vignette framing the picture beautifully.
Samyi posted “Paris Piage” in March. He uses Depth of Field in an interesting way. The sharpest part of the picture is a rivet in the folding chair. Everything becomes more blurred as they are more distant from that rivet. The way he frames the picture, he almost divides it into quadrants, but the rivets are perfectly in place for the Rule of Thirds.
Sari Choche posted “At Night” in April. I love this for capturing exactly how I feel when I wake up in the middle of the night, confused. The circle of light over her head could be the flash of a camera but to me, it is the disappearing remnants of a dream, the kind of dream that wakes you up in the middle of the night. This picture made me feel seen because I seldom know why I wake up in the middle of the night, but I will sit up and my thought balloon is exactly this empty.
For more 2024 favorites I missed , click here:
Finerthreads posted “Normal Is an Illusion” in May. I love the colors, yellow and blue are complementary colors so they always appeal. The picture itself makes me think of an Art Deco advertisement, perhaps for cigarettes. It’s very stylized and completely appealing.
Courier Wainwright posted “Sometimes” in June. He could be looking for his contact lenses, but I think he could be fallen to the ground in despair. He paid attention to the details, wet hair and wet clothing in the rain in the dusk. There is a melancholy to this picture and I think it’s emotionally moving.
Azure Bleu posted “Paradise” in July. A goat kid in the foreground looks through the fog toward a cow and her calf. It’s a lovely picture with a clearly delineated foreground and background. Paradise is a great name since most livestock live well and peaceably together. The idea of Paradise with the animals makes me think of “A Peaceable Kingdom,” a series of paintings by Edward Hicks inspired by Isaiah 6:11.
Teagan Tunwarm posted “Bella’s Lullaby” in August. It’s a lovely picture of a Canadian Goose, that beautiful bird whose annual migration is a harbinger of spring and fall. Using Depth of Field makes the flowers off to the goose’s right fall out of focus. It’s simply gorgeous.
Rosie Nova posted this untitled picture in September. The sunflowers are leading lines bringing our eyes right to the scarecrow. The moonlight shines down over our (the viewer’s) shoulder lighting the flowers. It is likely moonlight from the blue cast to it. The colors are saturated, bold and intense. I just love everything about this picture.
Mavi Beck posted “Cowspotting” in October. I love the windsock. That is what she is looking at, not the cow. Windsockspotting does not sound as powerful, though. She’s sitting in a water trough between two rapeseed fields. This is a fantastic picture, so simple and yet, it’s enigmatic.
Diva 2025 posted “Red Lips” in November. The pieces of her face are just a tad off alignment and the little bits of gradient make the picture seem even more disassembled. It’s a very modern pop art picture. It’s a monochrome picture with just the one pop of red and it instantly draws my eyes.
Mihailsk posted 2025 on the final day of December. Moving from one year to the next can seem like riding our bikes off a cliff. The old year is blowing away like leaves off a tree or petals from a flower. The new year has no visible features. Even though there is nothing visible in the new year, the picture feels optimistic.
One thing looking at a year of favorite pictures that I did not feature tells me that we are not going to run out of great SL artists any time soon. Good news for 2025.
All images copyright the various artists.
See all Cajsa's Choices here. Want to recommend an artist to feature? Tag Cajsa with your favorite pics on Flickr, on Primfeed, and Facebook. (Self-promotion welcome!)
Cajsa’s Choices is devoted to unique, artistic, and innovative virtual world-based images and screenshots that showcase the medium as an art form and Second Life as a creative platform. (Generally not images that fit on this Bingo card.)
Cajsa Lilliehook is a seventeen year resident of Second Life, where she owned a photo studio, spent several years as a DJ at The Velvet, and for her first SL job, cleaned up prim trash. She co-founded and runs the It’s Only Fashion blog with her best friend Gidge Uriza. She also has a book review blog, Tonstant Weader Reviews and a cooking blog, Single Serving Recipes. She spends a lot of time researching and reporting on Republican sexual predators. In her first life, she is a retired grassroots leader who has worked for economic and social justice issues most of her life. She is also the minion of a cat named Nora.
What a lovely way to start the new year—by reflecting on the beauty and creativity of the past! "Walk with Me" sounds like a truly stunning piece. Vee’s minimalist approach, focusing on just the essentials, really brings out the story behind the image.
Posted by: Oneonta | Wednesday, January 08, 2025 at 03:36 AM