Dedication to Grandpa Oscar

  Life has a way of throwing things in our path that can be hard, and while 2020 may have been extremely hard on all of us, it has been harder still for me. I know many of us loose loved ones, and have lost many to COVID-19, other disease, accidents, or just of old age. Now I have lost my grandpa, who is one of the greatest examples to me of humility and greatness in my life. I have many fond memories spending time with him while he was on his laptop visiting, and of the jokes he made while spending time with everyone. He passed due to Multiple Myeloma, a type of blood cancer that spread rapidly, so in memory of him and for the length of time he fought this cancer, I made this in the color of the cancer, burgundy.

I started with the burgundy color in the center, and moved it outward using Gaussian Blur, Dents, and Radial Blur. I then added some burgundy to the left and did some more Gaussian Blur and Dents, then duplicated it and flipped it to the right. Then on the right I added white to make half the image dark and half the image bright. I then took a while on the ribbon, by making a crude outline, filling it, and touching it up a bit. I then added shading, and my grandpa's name to the ribbon much like I did with my dad's pink ribbon image from almost 10 years ago. I blended it in with Overlay and brought the opacity down a bit to make it more like it was printed on the ribbon. I then added the words on the top and the years on the bottom and blended with Overlay and Glow, bringing the opacity down again.

I do have a bit of symbolism that I added to this image. One side is dark, which to me symbolizes the sadness of loosing him, as well as the pain he had to endure in life with the medications and procedures he had to endure. The other side, however, is white, which symbolizes the happiness that he no longer has to endure the pain, and that I believe I will see him again after this life. I will miss him, and although he didn't come to visit often, they came and were present for long periods of time. I'm sad he's gone, but I'm also very glad he's not in pain anymore. I'm sure I'll see you again on the other side grandpa.