Dedication to Grandma Lety

Yesterday at 7 PM Mountain Time, my grandma on my mom's side passed away. Shortly after my grandpa passed, she started going down hill fast. It almost seems like she couldn't live without him by her side. She died mostly due to dementia and extreme weight loss. I was a bit sad, but not as sad as my mom, who called me right when my grandma died. I decided to make a bit of a dedication to her much like I did for my grandpa, and here I give you my dedicatory piece to remember her by.

I looked online what the colors of dementia were, and they were a purple ribbon. I don't really want to do ribbons unless it is a cancer, just to be consistent. I then saw that there was a pin with a forget me not flower, which is at the center of the piece. My grandma seemed like the kind of person that liked bright flowers and colors, so I made sure to incorporate that into this piece.

The process I went through was I made a very crude flower, then a circle for the middle. I then looked at it, and thought, I could make it look a bit better. I hid those layers, and tried making a different looking flower. I got a design I wanted, and then drew and manipulated lines so that they would look a bit better. I then touched them up a bit with an eraser and drew them again. I then did a magic select, selected the outside of the flower, inverted, and filled in the flower on a new layer.

I then did a Zoom Blur on the outline, duplicated and merged it a few times, and did another Zoom Blur for the subtle fade. I then did the same on the filled in part. I then saw the star in the middle, and decided to get rid of the blue, and replace it with yellow. I did the same sort of thing for the middle as I did for the rest of the flower. I then applied Reflect and Screen layer blend modes on the middle with a gray color. The purple was made with my classic background effects, Dents, Gaussian Blur, and Radial Blur. I then used one of the Radial Blur layers and did a polar inversion for more texture. I blended them all together using reflect for a brighter center.

I didn't add any sort of symbolism on purpose, but as I was looking at the piece, I noticed that the outside was surrounded with darkness, while the middle was brighter. To me, it seemed that after my grandpa passed away, she was feeling sad to the point of not having much will to move on. After passing, I'm sure they both are together again and feeling happy to be together once more, hence the brighter flower. I hope they are both extremely happy to be with one another again, and that they have a good time in the next life. I'll see you again someday grandma. Love you!