Anakin likes to draw. He used to draw things for his mother-things he couldn't have possibly known about, things in the future (and sometimes in the past), things from planets far away. He drew the things he saw in his dreams. She would always smile when he showed them to her-a sort of sad smile, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Anakin sometimes wonders whether that's the only kind of smile she knows, and then he gets angry, because Mom shouldn't be sad, shouldn't have to smile like that. Mom deserves to be happy. And so he draws for her.
After Anakin is taken away by the Jedi he draws a lot less. Some of the Initiates make fun of him for wanting to draw things simply because they are beautiful (and because he still wants to run to his mother, to show her how he's improved and the colours he can use, and she'd smile her sad smile and hug him and everything would be all right) and when he gets angry at them he is admonished (control your emotions, padawan!). He doesn't even have time to draw-he's so behind on all of his classes, has so much homework and training that he's tired all the time (but even though he tries his best he's not good enough) and somehow art fades away, and he's left wanting something that he can't quite name, wanting to create something beautiful but not sure how.
(when his mother dies in his arms he feels a fire, a burning fire that rages and rips him apart. The Force cries out at her death, and weeps for the slain Sandpeople, but Anakin sits, dry-eyed, in the desert beside his mother's grave and paints. Red flames engulf a black figure. Smoke rises from the distance, and in the foreground there's a woman lying, lifeless, on the ground. He doesn't know what it means and is too tired, too drained to try to figure it out.)
The last time he draws is on the Separatist battlefield, waiting for Obi-Wan to wake up so they can report to the Council and move on. There are bodies all around-bodies of clankers and brothers, lying lifeless. The Force is wounded deeply here, and it keens over the loss of its children. He feels vindicated looking at the broken, burnt, battle droids, but he doesn't look too long because his eyes will inevitably be drawn to a clone, lying in the dirt, and then he'll remember how he died (he's not sure whether he remembers each death, or whether they've just blurred together into one, that he remembers day in and day out, that he sees every time he closes his eyes, that he can't get out of his head) and he hates himself a little more because he failed, and he should have been able to save them all (should have been able to save Mom). He wasn't really paying attention to his hands-they were moving over the flimsi of their own accord-and it's not until he feels Obi-Wan's muted surprise that he looks down. It's not beautiful. It's not colourful. It doesn't have any of the childish joy that he vaguely remembers in the things he used to draw. It's a battlefield, full of the dead and dying, the wounded, and so few of the living. Flames lick the corners of buildings that are burnt and blackened from the fighting, and in the centre there's a dead Jedi, his lightsaber still in his hand, surround by those that he failed to protect. (in the foreground there's a woman lying, lifeless, on the ground. He doesn't really notice the dark figure behind her that mourns, or the flames springing from its heart.) Obi-Wan looks worried, but Anakin brushes off his concern, and they report to the Council.
Three days later they're called back to Coruscant to rescue the Chancellor.