Lion Walking Among Grass Blades at Night

The assignment was to do an animal in pastel. This was my first time ever doing something seriously in pastel, so I mistakenly used graphite to lay down the sketch. There was a lot of erasing. I wanted to have some of the graphite show for a silvery effect, but I chose color over that. The lion is supposed to represent a boy I had a crush on, and I tried really hard to make the face in the likeness of him. However, it's face looks more like my older brother's, especially with the jawline. The alternating colors of the mane and the grass represent piano keys. And grass blades represent clarinet reeds. All of the bright colors and radiating lines represent the revering way I saw this boy. I have been told that this piece seems very spiritual. I feel like it has morphed into some different meaning than what was my original intention.