Galaxies of Hope /// Original art for @holoz0r's Lauralemons tribute award /// Round 2

For round two of this contest the theme is HOPE. I struggled with this theme for some time, it sounds quite pessimistic but my art tends to skew towards expressing my darker emotions. I had to think for a long time about what gives me hope. Some of the topics that came to mind were family, friends, knowledge, and art itself.

Concept

Since it had to be a visual representation I was a little stumped in how to convey these things in a non cliché way. The final concepts I settled on were friendship/support and infinity. To represent my friendships and support network I used the symbolism of balloons lifting me up. The woman in the image is a quasi self portrait. The galaxy/space imagery represents the infinite support networks we all have access to when we are in need of a hand (or should). There's also something freeing about the idea of floating in space so I worked all these ides together to create this final surreal and dreamlike composition.

I've made a gif to show the various iterations of this image I went through before settling on the final product.

Final Image

Thank you @holoz0r for holding this challenging contest: https://steemit.com/contest/@holoz0r/who-made-it-through-to-the-second-round-of-the-lauralemons-tribute-find-out-here