Drawing Project 5 – My Dream
“I Don’t Want to Wake Up” April 2024
Medium: soft vine charcoal, #2, #4, #6 charcoal pencils, precision eraser, compressed charcoal on 18″ x 24″ drawing paper
The overall project assignment was to draw a dream or a dreamlike drawing.
I chose to draw a happy dream – not one that I necessarily have had, but a drawing that incorporates different aspects of the good dreams that I have had: the feeling of flying without wings, and situations/environments defying explanation – not experienced in real life. Other features of the drawing depict real experiences that I savor, but like a dream, are fleeting – the sights and sounds of being in nature and at a concert, the time that I spend with my grown children.
I would like there to be a little mystery about the drawing. Is the viewer perception of the tall person watching me fly through the air on my bike that of a menacing stranger? Is everything going into the vortex like a tornado? Or are we being happily drawn into it?
My project sources were photographs I’ve taken that are of happy moments in my life: a photo of my son standing beside me at a Billy Strings concert; a photo he took of me bike-riding in France; my dog sliding across the floor; flowers, plants and places in nature that I find beautiful.
I was challenged by some of the details. I spent forever working on my son’s ear… I had a difficult time with the angle and lighting of the photo. I had lots of photos of flowers, but depicting them in motion – being pulled into the vortex – required a bit of creative license. I think that in the end, there could have been better balance in the value of the foreground and background of the drawing, and that the flowers and bugs, etc. flying into the vortex could have been larger or somehow more pronounced. Even with a lot of them flying around, there seems to be a lot of negative space in the center of the drawing.
I’m happiest with how the silhouette and concert-goers and swirling plants and tree frame the drawing, and how the concert scene blends into the nature scene. I know the significance of each of the components of the dream/drawing, so it brings me happiness. I think the drawing is still successful if others don’t have the same feeling looking at it as I do… that it can vary with interpretation.
Some of the photos used for the drawing:
