"My Holiday Dream..." As far back as I can remember - even as a child (ok, I was a weird kid) - my holiday dreams of hope and peace outweighed by far those of candy, toys, and Santa Claus. Growing up in the Cold War era, with the threat of nuclear devastation of all humankind drummed into me by the media, school air-raid drills, and overheard adults' conversations, it was only too obvious to me how people's outlooks changed with the approach of the holidays. Dread and worry were replaced by hope and laughter. Folks became more generous, more tolerant, more... peaceful - even amid the hubbub of holiday preparations. World leaders, usually at each others' throats the rest of the year, exchanged holiday greetings and proclaimed hope for more peaceful coexistence in the coming year. That hope was repeated in church and in my home. In the years that have since followed that time, the dream of hope and peace blanketing the Earth not only this one season each year, but every season of all years to come, has never failed to color my mind with its simple, profound beauty. It remains my dream for you and yours this holiday season, and every day thereafter. About the artwork: I wanted to portray the grandeur and simplicity of the hope-and-peace dream... how to do that? For not only me, but for many people, the white dove symbolizes peace - as well as the Prince of Peace for the world's Christian population. Similarly hope is often tied to a rainbow - and again is so explicitly linked in the Old Testament in the story of Nuah and his ark. For me, hope has always seemed to be the message conveyed by the sun's emergence from the imposed darkness of a total eclipse. And as you can see, each of those elements found its way into my composition. The piece was largely executed in PowerPoint. It combines elements of two previous works, the bird and the total eclipse, both of which in their day took me several painstaking months of free time to draw free-hand using my mouse and PowerPoint's freeform drawing tool. Having those elements to start with, creation of this image - thankfully - took considerably less time: a matter of several days instead of several months. I first removed all oval smudges (a couple thousand) from the bird and set the remaining shapes to be filled with a 95% transparent white-grey, to give the bird its shimmery translucent dove-like appearance. I put it together with the total eclipse drawing, also in PowerPoint, and saved it as a jpeg. Next I used Picnik, a free-ware package available online, to give it a sepia tone, then tweak boost, focal black-and-white, focal zoom, and other fun effects, until the scene took on its present multihued appearance. That photomanipulated jpeg got imported back into - you guessed it - good ol' PowerPoint, wherein I touched it up here and there with a few dozen smudges and added the text. Voila! One final note: The original image of the eclipse that I drew a couple of years ago has always looked to me like a cosmic iris surrounding a dilated pupil. Seeing it now in its new setting it strikes me that perhaps it is God's eye I'm looking at, and that Hope, depicted by the emerging sun's bright-spot, is the twinkle in it as He assures us that all will be well. Happy Holidays, Love, Warmth, Hope and Peace to you all.