Hot air balloons over dunes at dawn
I love this sketch. I saw a photo by Soe Zeya Tun for Reuters that was of exactly this subject and topic as part of a photo piece at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/lighter_than_air.html and decided that the image would be easy to emulate in Inkscape. (Apologies to Soe Zeya Tun)
In Inkscape, I created the dunes by creating 4 rectangles and converting them to paths and tweaking them into hilly shapes. I added increasing levels of blur to each receding ridge to add atmospheric depth and distance. I then created a single balloon complete with basket and connections, and when I was happy with it, I duplicated and resized two more.
The really great thing about creating this image from scratch is the ultimate control of placement and composition that Soe had to rely on the balloon pilots to provide for her.
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