I've only ever done a few digital drawings before, and this was the hardest I've worked on one so far. Since I don't have Photoshop yet, I did this in Procreate on my iPad. I learned so much technically (For example, create LAYERS. I did this in two. oops.) and had a lot of fun. :)

Work in Progress: https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/sarahbamf/work-in-progress

While working on this, I found myself creating a story in my mind to go along with it. Part of what I imagined was that this man, who lost his lover, visited her grave on a special anniversary to bring her flowers and talk to her. The dialogue that came to mind was "I can't help but notice that the sky has been so much more beautiful since I lost you. And that makes me want to believe that you're in heaven- because it's too hard to imagine a universe where you don't exist...somewhere." This ties to my own personal beliefs and feelings of grief. I was raised Baptist, but as hard as I've tried, I've never been able to make myself believe that there is a God. As much as I'd love to have that soft, reliable feeling that someone is watching over me, I just can't. And that makes loss harder on my heart because I can't rest easy knowing that anyone I lose is somewhere safe and happy for eternity. I just lose them. I hope that this clarifies the tone that I was going for in my illustration.