SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

The pristine white blanket of snow stretches out before you. Silent. Serene. But you know better—you know what danger lurks beneath this soothing facade. The forest has kept you alive, but now you must veer from its safety and venture out into the vast white void. Your senses are on high alert as you embark on your snowy covert operation.

Biting cold winds whip fresh flakes around you as you step into the snow-covered wilderness. You move with urgency and caution, crossing the exposed landscape. The snow masks your approach as you near your target. Your mission is clear: infiltrate the enemy’s hidden base in this icy expanse and retrieve the intel for this week’s SLDS challenge prompt.

What is SLDS?: SLDS is a weekly prompt challenge that encourages artists of all levels, including non-artists, to create an image with a spy and romance theme. You can use various tools such as Photoshop, ArtRage, Procreate, DALL-E, MidJourney, Microsoft Edge’s CoPilot, or any other software that you prefer to create your artwork.

Last Week’s Highlights: Whispered Conversation in a Library

Before we venture into this icy terrain, let’s celebrate the incredible entries from last week’s challenge, “A Whispered Conversation in a Library.”

Stacks of Inspiration with Jez

Check out Jez’s post for more inspired whisperings between the stacks.

Stacks of Body Language with Kevin

Check out Kevin’s post for more sizzling body language in the stacks.

This Week’s Challenge: A Covert Operation in a Snow-Covered Landscape

Snow can be an asset or your downfall on a mission. Fresh falls of snow can cover the sound of your approach or cover your tracks, making it difficult for any pursuers. But, the adverse is also true. And without any fresh flakes, your trek through the snow isn’t exactly quiet or invisible.

Diving In

Snow always reminds me of the couple I discovered during one of my old writing challenges (Genre Scribes). Amy and Kelvin crash-landed on a snow-covered mountain and were on the run from Consortium agents. This story soon took hold of me and has become the basis for a future Deniable Unit story.

One scene, well, the image of one part, lives in my head. And this seems like the perfect prompt to bring it to life!

Let’s Do a Snowy Covert Operation

The image I’m going for is when a small team of bad guys has traced our couple to a cave. There’s nothing too special about the image in my head, but the scene made me realise there was a whole novel in my wee story.

PROMPT: Create a wide-format, aerial view image of a covert team on a snowbound mountain. The team of bad guys, armed with weapons, advances on a small cave. In the distance, they’ve left their snowmobiles (it is a covert op) and are on foot. There’s an unsuspecting couple inside the cave. The team’s goal is to take the couple out.

It would appear that my definition of covert and DALL-E’s is a wee bittie different. ?

Maybe the addition of the couple is one detail too many for the AI. Let’s remove them.

PROMPT: Create a wide-format, aerial view image of a covert team on a snowbound mountain. The team, armed with weapons, advances on a small cave. In the distance, they’ve left their snowmobiles (it is a covert op) and are on foot.

This covert op is becoming a tad too overt. I think that the snowmobiles have to go.

Making the Overt Covert

PROMPT: Create a wide-format, aerial view image of a covert team of three on a snowbound mountain. The team, armed with weapons, advances on a small cave.

Let’s Make the Snowy Op… Covert

Closer! But that combat gear stands out a mile.

PROMPT: Change their gear to Arctic combat.

Yes! Though it’s not exactly what I wanted to see, I love it. Even the cave looks more natural ?

Over to You

So, are you up for a challenge? Fire up your favourite digital art creation tool or image generator and join in. I can’t wait to see what wonders you create! (See the beginning of the post for “How to join in”).

Hit the follow button and join us next week to see where our creative journey takes us.

Till next time, stay awesome,

Susan x