These particular trees were creepy enough to immediately make me think of Drusilla, and they also seemed to be the sort of trees you would imagine someone fleeing in terror through, so I thought of Angelus stalking Dru, making her insane, and thus the subject matter was decided. The picture of Angelus is from Becoming Part 1 (where he's stalking Buffy from behind trees, that's why I thought of it!), as are the ones of vamp Dru and alive Dru.

I have the sneaking suspicion that there's a lot of Baudelaire verse that would work well for Buffyverse collages, so I grabbed my copy of Fleurs du mal and flipped it open to a random page, and happened upon "le Revenant", about a ghost returning to his lover for some spectral midnight kisses. The last verse seemed to work very well for Angelus, so I decided to use it in this piece. Roughly translated: "As others might use tenderness, I want to rule over your life and youth with terror."

I was originally going to include a slightly modified version of Angel explaining what Angelus did to Dru, but I decided it was too much text. I'll put it here though: "Drusilla was... an obsession of mine. she was pure and sweet and chaste...And I made her a vampire. But first, I made her insane. Killed everybody she loved. Visited every mental torture on her I could devise. She eventually fled to a convent, and on the day she took her holy orders, I turned her into a demon."

In terms of technique, nothing too fancy. I used the selective color tool to make the trees purply, and copied and re-copied until I'd filled the square canvas (the original picture was horizontally rectangular). Layered my desired images, setting the vamp dru to overlay. Added the moon from a stock pic on gettyone.com. A little lense flare among the trees to the left. The fonts are high tower text with fine hand for the accents. Added texture with the grain->vertical filter, and used some custom brushes to scuff up the edges (aircrash.nu). Increased the saturation a bit, too.

I'm not a 100% satisified, but I already spent way more time than I had originally anticipated on it, so I thought it was time to stop tinkering and post already.

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Lerdo writes:

You picked a great Angelus cap. I like how the color of the text echoes the color of the moon. I love the purplish tint evident in parts of the image. And it's brilliant how you used the vamped-out Drusilla image in the background. Oh, and great quote. This has a strong Angelus-on-the-hunt feel.

Neige writes:

I really love it. Love the atmosfear and how you created so well the feelings you wanted to. Very creepy ;) Very nice Angel picture you got there, sort of disturbing ;) Can I ask where you got it if possible please? I also like the colors you used (the dark purple shades). You poem fits also perfectly the collage. Great work!

Baudelaire is indeed an excellent poet for the Buffy/ATS verse ;) Creepiness and sensuality get all mixed up. You have given me the idea to open up my old 'Les Fleurs du Mal' copy and get some collages inspiration ;)

Val writes:

Oh! Another very cool one.. *love* the moon.. and that image of Angel, very spooky! Dru.. always spooky to me! She she fits this so well, all the images do with the challenge image... and the color.. slight, but there.. adn the text.. LOVE it.. the small with the big, the French.. took 3 years Spanish!:) awesome work, Vrya!!!