Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search competition

A couple of months ago I was given the heads up about this competition with Lilla Rogers agency and although I know they will get thousands of entries and it is highly unlikely that my work will get to the shortlist stage, i thought what the hell i may as well go for it. Besides it sounded fun and would give me an opportunity to do some different work.
The deadline for the first stage entry was yesterday so i think its now safe to tell people that the the first stage assignment was to produce wall art with the theme of 'Little Terrarium'. There are three stages and from this first one 50 are selected and go through to the next round.
So wish me luck!

I started off by gathering together lots of different images of terrariums. Before this competition I had never even heard of a terrarium before.
After lots of pencil and paint sketches and a number of different thumbnail design ideas I spotted a beautiful terrarium bonsai on a blog. In a moment of inspiration and after producing a little thumbnail version of the idea i decided to work it up into a full size sketch -

I liked it so much that I decided to go with this and here is the final illustration, which i've titled 'Sanctuary':

Its created using watercolours, gouache and PhotoShop.
I really like the way it turned out, but i have my doubts that it will get selected amongst the 50 as i don't think its really what the judges are looking for - not sure its commercial enough. However if by some miracle it does get through then i'll be sure to post an update on here.