Its like a rugged sketch Arati, feels like some scene straight out of a Vasilisa story

The processing works for me, those lines are like scratches, add a lot of drama and motion to the image.. Like!!

good heavens you read my mind. when i saw this image i could only think of Vasilisa and the grey wolf. but of course these are not wolves ... i thought of the story of remus and romulus ... and what not. but of course they are not wolves, i have to keep reminding myself. i wanted it to be raw -- raucous -- an image where you can almost hear them. can you?

thanks radz.
A

you bet! other than the fact that they aren't wolves, this is just totally straight out of Vasilisa! I am sure Ivan will burst out of the image any moment on his handsome black steed

I can hear them, yes! I love the edgy feel this image creates kano

arati, dark ,sinister,wolfish, the treatment given to this image and conversion to monotones darkish, have created the feel u wanted,it stops one in ones tracks. impact is quite a bit.
im not sure it looks like a photograph or a digital sketch.not enough experienced , but the thought did cross my mind..i may be wrong. having said that, ive come back to this image many a times, trying to decipher and distill my own feelings..that itself says a lot.:)

Thanks neelu! interesting comment ...
i dont know what a digital sketch is, so i cannot address that point, but i will tell you what i did:

in my film days we called it pushing film heavily ... i have stopped down 3-4 stops on this one, because light was so low and at full zoom, even lower. i wanted to freeze the mouth action. i had focused on the open mouth of the dhole with a full aperture, so the rest has gone slightly fuzzy. and in processing, i "pushed film." so the grainy movement is all from the action and the pushing.

glad that the "effect" was achieved we should discuss what a digital sketch is, sometime - would like to see what you mean.
best,
A

Beautiful painting here Arati, I liked the way you have cropped one dhole in the frame and underexposed the left half of the image, this looks perfect to me. And yes I do hear them which made this special for me. Thanks for sharing.