the paintinggate is so alive again
in this interview from s4 the Duffers were saying how many, many drafts there was of this painting
when there was the promo before s5, the crew gave Finn this version of the painting, and i never looked too closely on it, but now - when there's a new book out and another version of the painting seems to be there - i went back to rewatch this video, and it's so obvious how different the painting is from the original. i never noticed that the trees weren't there at all!
(thanks to Ace @disastertourwaterdeepedition for pointing this out! )
so we have the version with no trees,
then the scorched/barren trees from the new book (called "Stranger Things the official story behind the legendary series")
and the fully green trees from the original show - what we saw Will gave to Mike in 4x8
+ in the 5x8 epilogue it seems it's still the same painting as in 4x8 - noticeably tall green trees, at least.
what i find kind of ironic is how the short video of Finn actually combines the two variants - it literally shows us how it's supposed to look - the original version from the show, mixed in between the footage of what he got in his hands:
and after s5, this seems awfully familiar to episode 5, when we get 2 scenes of something in details being wrong, but you have to pay attention to it:
the one thing pointed out by Holly - it was supposed to be yellow:
and the dial - with Lucas explaining his plan, we see a flashback to Steve powering down the dial from 5x1 when it was grey.
then later in ep 5 when Robin cranks it up it's red. something that most fans noticed immediately, but noone in the show pointed it out as weird.
back to the painting- what does it mean if they made so many drafts and versions, did they settle on one, but then used the others for other ST projects like books and promo. or are all those drafts each slightly different of the same scene/concept art but with different details, and there's a reason for it, we just don't know it yet?
