The girl in this picture is a wrecker, someone who uses a false light to cause a shipwreck and then plunders the wreckage. Wreckers actually did exist (if you're curious, there's a Wikipedia article on it: [link] - yes, I'm lazy and I use Wikipedia). The concept of using a light to lure the ship to shore is one commonly found in wrecking stories, though it isn't actually accurate (a light - such as one in a lighthouse - would actually warn the ship away from the rocks, rather than toward them). Historical inaccuracy aside, I wanted to use the idea of a "false light" for this picture because I liked the scene it portrayed - a lone girl standing on the shore on a stormy night, holding up her light and waiting...

I'm not sure what possessed me to do this particular manipulation, really. I was browsing through stock and came upon some images that I really liked, and I remembered something I'd read awhile back about wreckers, and I guess that's where the idea stemmed from.


Credits:

Model: =archetype-stock
Rocks: *BreedStock
Clouds: ~DarkMaiden-Stock
Ocean: ~MurfQ-Stock
Ship: ~gothika-stock
Lantern: *chop-stock
Seagull: *Della-Stock
Brushes: vbrush [link]