I'm honestly curious how you made this. It looks like one of those scratch-away papers, kinda sorta. The choice of negative colors makes it visually interesting, though.

This looks like a pair of ponies walking away from a smouldering fire in the light of the rising sun. I didn't catch onto that at first, though, because the hoofprints weren't obviously hoofprints to me. That's probably because unless that's a huge fire, they seem off, scale-wise, and because I originally thought they were just more 'noise', like a lot of the other scratches seem to be.

This seems pretty experimental, but once I stared at it for a bit it started making some sense.

Upon the rising sun of another day in Equestria, it turns out to be another dreadful day...

I can most definitely see where your imagination went into, however I do have to deduct in the fact that I have to study it in order to understand what truly is happening. Though, with a color scheme of only black and white, I do have to give you at least some kind of benefit of the doubt in your struggles. But I can't forgive everything.

Maybe, though, it could've been overall better if you had probably planned in advance. Stuff like the tree meshes in the background of the sky, and you have to look close to realize that the tree is actually a separate entity.

Or is that smoke from a campfire? Like I said, it really requires studying.

I spent several minutes staring at this picture trying to figure out two things: what is going on here, and was this actually made with one of those scratch-pad-things.

My first thought was that this was supposed to be the remains of a forest fire, or something along those lines (the title really pushed me towards that line of thought). Eventually, I figured out that it's just two ponies walking away from a campfire. Which leads me into my two problems with this picture. First, it's messy. I realize that at least part of the reason for that is the medium, but it still makes it hard to understand the piece. The second problem is that the title, prompt, and "action" draw attention to the campfire and ponies, but the piece is really a landscape, and those are just small details. I suppose you could argue that the campfire is an important part of the landscape, but it still feels like just a minor addition. But maybe that isn't really as big of a problem as I'm making it out to be.

Now as for the medium, I think this actually was made with one of those scratch things. If not, you really did a good job of simulating it. So if nothing else, I think you deserve points for experimenting with an unusual medium.
I don't think I've seen one of these scratch things since like 5th grade.

I like the inverted colors here; it works well. Honestly, I didn't think I would end up rating this as well as it did - I'm not generally a big fan of abstract perspective like this - but it was pretty striking and it works reasonably well as a prompt for a story (there's a lot of options for what to do with the scene, but it gives you a decent starting point).

My two biggest problems with this is that it is really easy to lose the ponies at first glance and the smoke/sky interface isn't great.

I will just add that it could have been made electronically, either white on a black background or color-inverted from normal black-on-white. The black substrate does help distinguish land from sky, but excepting that gimmick it's very rough as others have noted.

Is anyone else getting a Millions of Cats vibe from this one?

I suppose I've outed myself as liking sketchy abstract-ish stuff. This almost borders on too sketchy to get the image across, though, considering that there do seem to be some definite shapes in there. But it's a cool piece regardless.

Ooh, nice. Perhaps it's just because I've been playing a lot of Breath of the Wild lately, but I'm liking the wasteland aesthetic here. The coloring only makes it more stark.

I really like this, but I personally think it might have benefitted from even more going on. It works for me because I have to work to see things, which is mostly due to the doodly lines and the negative color scheme. Putting even more things in it and a bit distraction would make this something one could look each day and discover something new.

@caption_rates
When the artist had to go to pee, the caption volunteered to leave the screen and hold their brushes. Such selflessness brings a tear to my eye. 8/10

>>Not_A_Hat, >>Kritten, >>The_Letter_J, >>TitaniumDragon, >>KwirkyJ, >>CoffeeMinion, >>Dubs_Rewatcher, >>horizon

No More Fears Form Here

This one shames me.

I had a beautiful idea at the start of the round, which I planned to execute on scratchboard, of a gathering of storytellers around a campfire, with the smoke visualizing the story they told. I thought this would be simple to execute and was full of fire for the idea.

But as the days ticked on, I just wasn’t getting anywhere with it. I spent too much time planning, I think, and I got paralyzed with the thoughts of “not good enough.”

So on the last day, I took the top half of this idea and crafted the Incense Burner to support it. Then, in the wee small hours of the morning when sane and productive people are fast asleep and one’s judgement is not at its best, I tossed this out, a poor skeleton of my original concept, in little more time than it took me to draw Treetops.

I hereby apologize to the ghost of my original concept. I am glad that folks here got something from the result, so it was not entirely a waste of time, but I regret presenting it to you all in such a state. I could, and should, have done much better.

Thank you for your patience, kindness and comments.