First off, this entire thing was made [almost] entirely by me, with a bit of stock for the clouds [though I can never find stock that I like, so I end up painting half of it and painting over the rest >_<]. The vector took forever, and I even spent a good deal of time on the text and little symbol [which does say "Mary Magdalene", but it's a bit dark]. Now for the unconventional bit [AKA the bit where I don't talk about how many layers/hours/blood I put into this sucker, but more emotional ranting.]

I'd like to start out by noting that I am dedicating this wallpaper to old friends I've lost touch with, old friends I haven't lost touch with, and new friends. Most of you guys here at AP probably aren't going to read this. In fact, some of the people this is aimed at probably won't read it, but if you recognize yourself as one of the above, I'd be flattered if you'd take the time to read on.

In any case, I'll begin at the beginning. I've had this image on my computer for the better part of three years, and have always wanted to do something with it. I think a part of me knew that I didn't have the skills to properly fix the image and work with it the way that I wanted to, so I kept putting it off until recently. This image has a slight amount of emotional meaning to me [a joke between an old friend and I that I bet he doesn't even remember!], so I'm really happy that I was able to do something decent with it.

This particular image in this particular wallpaper is dedicated to someone. Are you that someone? Probably not. If you have no recollection of me ever speaking to you about this image, or you have no recollection of speaking to me in general... no. However, I know that everybody loses touch with old friends and makes new ones; that's just a part of life. Still, it makes you a bit sad to look back on a friendship that was relatively close [or in my case, several such friendships] and realize that you don't even know if that person is alright. Hence my earlier dedication of this particular piece of art [because that is essentially what a wallpaper is; no matter how you get to the end product, if it's more than an image you didn't take slapped onto a photograph you didn't make, there's some artistic process going on in there!] to friends. Mainly friends of the past [how are you guys, anyway?], but also friends of the present and future. I would have lost my tiny sliver of sanity long, long ago if it weren't for you guys.

Thanks for reading this far! If you didn't and have just skipped to the bottom, please excuse my rambling message. I simply didn't have anywhere else to put it. If any of you [old friends or hopeful new friends] want to drop me a line or chat about anything at all, I'd be extremely flattered. However, I'm shyer than I seem [and sometimes a bit paranoid], so I probably won't initiate anything!

And of course, it goes without saying that comments and favorites are absolutely loved :D I made this in 1440x900 [for use on Macs - I promise I'll make it bigger next time if I do another widescreen ;-;], but I do have 1200x900 and 1024x768 versions. I do advise that you at least look at the widescreen version, though, because the others are quite lacking in comparison. Thanks for all your support, everyone! (: