Always Remember

Some people remember the events of September 11 really well, and remember feeling terrified, sad, and in shock of what was occurring. I remember the events of that day 21 years ago, but I don't remember feeling that way, mostly because I was a kid in 4th grade, that didn't have a very good understanding of things in that respect. Not sure why I didn't have a more mature brain, and why I was just a kid with a minimal understanding, but I do remember watching on the TV at school and at home the collapse of the towers.

My wife wanted me to make an image that depicted that day in an abstract way, and so I listened to a very sad and solemn song to get me in a good place to be able to work on this special and heartfelt image. The process started with a very different image which I have posted on my Instagram. I initially wanted to have fire all around the borders of the image, and then have some hopeful colors come in to play in the middle, and after attempting and failing, I decided to go this route, which I call Always Remember.

What I did here was pretty much the same concept, but I created it on a 3840 x 3840 canvas, which is a super huge square canvas! I hoped my desktop would be up for the task, and it indeed was. I started with our patriotic colors, red white and blue, and distorted them into a Radial Blur, Gaussian Blur, and Dents. I then did the fire on the outside, which I made using light blue color, Gaussian Blur, and Dents, then applying the Fire rendering to it. I then duplicated it, and applied Radial Blur.

I then added the two towers in the middle, making two rectangles and adding an antenna to one of them. I then put them behind the fire so that they would look like they are behind those dreadful flames. Then on the top right, I added some colors of hope, namely yellow, green, and blue. I then distorted those with Radial Blur and blended them with a variety of layer blend modes, adjusting the opacity a bit for better effect.

I hope this image speaks to someone out there. If you would like this image, you can totally take it and use it as a desktop background, and as a mobile background. Yup, you heard that right! I made this big enough to be able to vary the size of the image so that I can make it fit well as a smartphone background. I have a 1657 x 3585 version here (fits on iPhone XR and similar) as well as a 1784 x 3306 version here (fits iPhone SE 2020 and similar). I hope you enjoy them if you choose to download them. Leave comments if you wish, and I'll see you here again soon.