About the story:

Where you ever in a situation that you weren't sure if it's real or a dream?

The character is finding himself in an extreme situation where he can't escape from. At this moment he is trying to break out of his dream but at the same time he is still covering his face from the heat and brightness of the fire.

The oil tanker that breaks through the dam moves the character into a surreal world. He stop to believe that he can survive but at the same time he is not accepting that it is real what he is seeing. And most important he is not accepting that he will die. Because there is still the possibility that it is a nightmare, he tries to break out of the dream whit all his mental force. Now he is between the two worlds. He is finding himself in the bed of the reality but simultaneously the fire of his nightmare is still surrounding him.

I choose "No Control" as title and as the name of the ship. First it explains that we don't have the control of what we are dreaming, like the captain of the ship is not having the control over this oiltanker and crashes into the end of the ocean.
Like the earth is a plate and he is reaching the end of the world. That could be connected to the feeling of the character that think he is reaching the end of his world. But that last point is just an interpretation.

The feelings and experience in that very short moment of switching between this two worlds are the spectacular parts that I wanted to capture in that picture. I tried to integrate this idea into a spectacular visual impression of that dream to support the story and make the viewer feeling the same like the character on the picture.

Now I want to thanks everyone here that supported me and it was very cool to participate in that challenge.

Marcel

I added more detail to the rocks, water and lighting. I took out the blur effects for now but I will add them at the end again.

Thanks a lot for all of your comments. Finally I took some time and worked again on it. I worked on the rocks, trees, lighting, snow and experimented around with color balance, levels and blur. Now the next part would be to add details for the print version.

I added a lot of details to it. I used diffrent custom brushes to paint the fire effects. I came to the fire idea during testing around with water effects and colored the water just for fun red ... So I came to the idea that fire would work cool with the dead forest and the water coming from the top that will extinguish it. And you see that the character was in a dangerous place before the ship came ... but now he is even in a more dangerous situation and he try to break out of the dream. The picture appears now more surreal I hope. Still the lighting will need adjustments. Other details will be added soon.

Now the fun part! Painting the crash and watereffects. I have now idea how it would looks when a tanker would crash into a dam ... but it just has to look spectacular:) About the colors I think I would keep the room (reality) monochromatic and the dam (dream)would be in colors. Btw the "DAMN DAM" is just a placeholder for a name.
Still alot of details are needed to show the size of that oil tanker but I'm not sure if its clear that it is a dream ...what do you think?

I painted a lot of details and realistic shadows to the bed and the table to make them work beside the realism of the character. Then I painted another ship to let it appear like a huge oil tanker that is strong enough to break that wall. Then I sketched some rocks.

I changed the composition a bit, flipped the room and made the dam higher. Then my brother took a photo of me and I placed it on the painting. Normaly I don't do that, but to safe a lot of time I just overpainted the photo of me and added other texture and light with hand painted elements. Some people would call that cheating, others would call that matte painting, ... I call that: taking the fastes way to the best result and win time for other important parts:)

This time the character, this time a sailor that sleeps inside a oil tanker or ship(not visible in this stage of the painting) dreams of a oil tanker that reaches the end of the ocean and crashes into a huge dam. And the oilthank will crash on the character in the next few seconds. So as you see this painting is a mix of all concept sketches I made before. Still a lot of details are needed to tell that story.
What do you think?

I made a very rough 3d model of the scene I had in mind to find very fast a dramatic and belivable view. This rendering is the base for the painting.

I made a pause and thought of something spectacular ... not connected to the dream concept. So this are the rough key sketches. They show how I found an idea that I like and that works with the dream idea.