Entry for Opheliafu's doodle contest #15 - The Secret Garden Key

Inspiration..

This week's contest from @opheliafu is based on the three words Garden, Key and secret. While kinda specific it also leaves a lot of room for interpretations and inspiration, just what I'm looking for when looking for inspiration for my art.
I've encountered a few contests lately where the premise is to inspire or to be inspired, as seen in the Tell me what to draw contest by @saywha, and I'm completely taken away by the possibilities that steemit offers artists. Being a steemit skeptic at first when @iwanderela and @fernwehninja introduced me to the platform, I'm now totally embracing steemit and the possibilities it provides. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'll never put down my skeptic purple tainted glasses and I still feel steemit has a lot of improvements ahead, but the community itself is awesome!

source

My goal as of now is to enter these awesome contests, write my own, hopefully, quality material and grow as much as possible to share and give back the same amount and more as I've been receiving already. In the long run though I want to arrange and run my own contests, inspired by all the amazing people on here doing just that.. to give motivation and inspiration, that would be so rewarding, pure magnificence!


my favourite tools atm..

But all in good time and right now that time is dedicated to my contest entry..

I knew from the beginning that with these key words (see what I did there?) I needed to think a bit outside the famous box. I figured that most entries would somehow feature a garden and a door, or something in that direction, and being the special snowflake that I am, I obviously had to do something different. I did my drawing last night without looking at any entries, sparing myself the agony of "OH MY GOD that looks so amazing, I can never compete with that!!"..But this morning I couldn't help myself before I posted my entry, and while I was partly right both in my expectations to the general theme and the skill level of my fellow contestants, I can't stop being amazed of the multitude of imaginations at work there.
Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself here in the whole process. After a quick brainstorming with a simply astounding amount of incredible ideas, in my own humble opinion obviously, I ended up with a very basic sketch that I really adored. It was enough "outside the box" to satisfy my ever increasing need to feel special and doable enough for my steadily growing, but still limited, skill level.
A lot of work and frustrated attempts later I ended up with my final product.. hope you'll appreciate it as much as I enjoyed making it! And although I have no high hopes to win the contest, 'cause the competition is really really fierce when it comes to doodling, I hope that @opheliafu will value my playing with her words.

The Secret Garden Key

opheliafu's contest

It has as always been a pleasure.. Be the best you can be and stay awesome!

Jesper