After a long time and a lot of patience and heartache this piece has finally come to a close.

My best friend Sharon and constant source of my inspiration who is also in my piece [link] passed away on the 29th Nov from a very brave struggle against cancer.

My world was crushed and every day was a struggle to get through without her and still is, she taught me so much and in my continuing of learning I feel she is here by side guiding me.

I started this piece when she was still here at the beginning of her illness and in some ways never wanted to finish it until the time was right, only now that it is complete do I feel that I have done her justice and by finishing it after her death it spans the end.

I wanted to portray heaven or should I say one interpretation of it, and to capture her essence.
In many ways I never wanted to finish it and for me it felt as though she was still here whilst I continued with it but now it is done a chapter has passed.

Layer upon layer of clouds make up the main centre of this piece, I stopped counting when I got to 150. It just had to look like it fitted in with the rest of the picture
The city of heaven was very difficult to complete, started this as a separate picture as with a lot of this and merged them all to make the final composition, layers of any old buildings I could find went into it to give it a very ancient and powerful feel.

Sharon had beautiful red hair and I wanted to capture the colour of this here,
The dress was based on [link] but includes a lot of manipulation like embroidery and silk and lace from myself.

There are so much personal things that went into this piece that I don’t know where to start:

The doves represent: 3 flying for every year that she touched my life, the one on the bench represents myself, grounded now she is no longer here.
Sharon was a Scorpio so the constellation of this is behind the moon.
There are a lot of protection symbols within the carvings in the bench.
Where she was laid to rest is now among the buildings and the spires of the city.
Those are only a couple that I’m willing to share.

Close up for detail can be found here : [link]
I hope that everyone likes this and please be kind with the comments.
This will explain my absence from DA for a while, but I’m back now.

Lower cloud layer & Tree : [link]
Brushes : [link]

Is there anything in this life but grief…we cling to what is gone