Illustration Friday - Dream - Part 3 - Nightmare

The final part of my triptych was going to be the nightmare. Nightmares are one of those dreams we often do remember and I wanted to use the elements of the original image and create a nightmare - the same way it often happens in dreams, when seemingly harmless objects turn into monsters and the pretty dream turns nasty and dangerous. Again, I used the same background, but this time I changed the colours and made them much darker; I also added another layer on top with weird lighting. Finally, I modfied the birds; they still resemble the floating shapes from the first two pictures but now they have teeth and spikes.

This was the first version of the picture:


Then, I played around with it in Photoshop. I still can't quite decide which version I like better. The second one seems spookier to me, but I like the darker more saturated effect of the first one, too. What do you think? Let me know.