"Do we really have to stand by and let it burn?"

"I told you, Derpy, it's a 'controlled burn.' It will prevent buildup of flammable plant matter, and help some plants that need fire for their life cycle."

"But how do we choose what to burn? How can we choose? There have to be just as many cuddly little animals living here as anyone else..."

"This is the Everfree Forest, Derpy. It doesn't work like the rest of Equestria. In this case, we don't choose what burns, only... only what doesn't burn. The cloud perimeter is being set up. Beyond that... is what we've chosen. If we decide to save everything, eventually there comes a fire too big for anypony to handle. The entire forest would be destroyed. So in a way, we have chosen to save everything. Or as close to it as we can."

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Decided it was finally time to practice landscapes. First one evar, yay? This is legitimately the first landscape I've ever done that wasn't completely half-assed.

Step 1: Get stoned on grass and prozac.
Step 2: Give self an afro with Elmer's glue.
Step 3: Make some custom brushes, the smallest of which is 1,000 px.
Step 4: Watch some old episodes of The Joy of Painting.

Okay, so I'm only going to actually do one of those. Now, let's see. A nice, bright, springtime sky, with some happy little clouds, with the sun just peeking out from behind one. Peek! I'm crazy, I like to go out and talk to the sun sometimes.

Now we put some happy little trees in the background, and some happy little bushes, and happy little smoke and fire... Smoke and fire? WTF? Aaaaaaah, fire! Goddamn you, Bob Ross, you never said anything about happy little forest fires!

Anyway, this was mainly an exercise in color choice and composition, aside from being my first landscape attempt. Think it turned out okay, though. Probably my best yet. I'm slowly learning how to use the smudge tool.

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Updated a tiny bit, nothing major. Just darkened the foreground, mainly. The lack of contrast started bugging me pretty shortly after I uploaded this, and I finally couldn't stop myself from fixing it any longer. You might need to press eff fiiiiiive if you've looked at this before.