Time Drawn: Spring and Summer 2011
My second post, the very first Sunday I updated, was one of my dreamscapes. This, my hundredth post, I show another. I do not have another, though I do have two in progress, one on paper and the other on the computer.
This one had more thought and organization put into it in the first. It has a theme of natural life, with trees and stars and sea and caves and all the things in between. It was still stream-of-conscious art, though, which is how it ended up with such oddities as two suns. But then, the discovery of interesting things is part of why I enjoy making these.
I also get to try out new techniques that I’ve come across (which I’m not as likely to do with my other pieces). The leaves of the tree are a Japanese method of filling space I’ve found in the “how to draw Manga” books I’ve read, though I can’t recall the name of the technique and I’m not sure where that book is right now. The stones below the tree are largely copies of ones I saw in the art shown in the end credits of the recent “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” movie, which look to be by the same artist who provided the art that’s in my parent’s old copy of the book, though I didn’t find that exact piece of art in the book. I’m still surprised I remembered how the stones had been drawn, since I only saw the movie once, and the art was only on screen for twenty to thirty seconds as it rolled slowly upwards. It’s always odd what catches my eye, since it was only the stones that stood out and, well, they were just part of the background. The mushrooms came from the background of the menu for my favorite pizza chain, Ledo Pizza. They’ve changed the menu design at least three times since that one, but that one I had on hand for long enough to copy down how they’d drawn the mushrooms, so I had my sketch to work from. The pattern of squares in the edge of the larger sun(the one right at the top of the image) was a blackwork embroidery pattern from one of my small collection of embroidery books. I use those books for non-embroidery projects far more often than you’d expect. Cross-stitch patterns are great for pixel art, for instance, or Minecraft projects for that matter.
So now you know a little of where I get my inspiration. Everywhere. I keep my eye out and keep finding interesting ways to draw things, and then I combine them all in my head, shake them up, and see what comes out. Which is usually quite odd and peculiar, since it’s being mixed in my head, which is odd and peculiar. Especially when I pour the result directly on the page with these dreamscapes, without going through the normal editing process of my other pieces.
