This is a picture i drew for my girlfriend Jo, as a Valentines/birthday present in 2006.  As you can see, i'm something of a hopeless romantic.

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It used a number of new techniques, some of which i'm very pleased with.  The fires were made with GIMP's iWarp filter, and a special gradient i found from a tutorial.  In the background, the stars were made with a custom brush of my own design, and i rather liked the scenery.  It's simple, with implicit rather than explicit detail.  This is a technique i really want to work on.