Sleepy Hollow

I've been thinking a lot about doing drawings inspired by a condition I have. I have Narcolepsy/Cataplexy. I've come to grips with a good bit of it since childhood but there are still some aspects that bother me deeply. With medication and naps, I can somewhat deal with the loss of sleep at night and the excessive daytime sleepiness. I think it's been helping with how my body responds to stress as well, so much that my cataplexy seems under control for now. The thing that still effects me though, are the hallucinations. Auditory and visual. Hypnogogic hallucinations occur because of how close to sleep a person with narcolepsy (PWN- looks like I'm PWNING somebody, mehe) is most of the time. Dreaming while awake, you see.

So if I were to draw how it feels to be a PWN, I think it'd be a bit therapeutic. Putting my horrors on display in a creative format might change the way I look at my hallucinations. Might change how people view Narcolepsy. We'll see. 

I have a friend who's a nurse now, but some time ago she had to interview someone with a condition for her class in college. The one question I clearly remember is if I thought that Narcolepsy inspired my creativity. I'd never thought about it before that question but I'm inclined to believe that it does. With all the crazy dreams I have (mostly apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic in nature) it is hard to ignore what my subconscious wants to show me. Everything is so strange, vivid, and intense. It can also be horrific. Shadow creatures are what I see the most when I'm not actually sleeping. The more stressed out I get about it, the more of them I see until they solidify into terrifying clarity. 

Ever since I could remember and up until my late teens, I took to heart everything I saw. While most kids imagined a creep in the corner in the darkness, I was actually seeing that creep. That creep was moving around my bed, then touching me. But as an adult I came to realize that if I were to think through these experiences, become curious and analyze what's going on instead of running headlong into fear, that the hallucinations tended to recede some. So with this curiosity, comes the thought for artwork. 

I sometimes wonder if I would have such a vivid imagination if it weren't for Narcolepsy. But then, I think it's irrelevant. Even if they came up with a cure for it, I'm sure that it's been so embedded in my psyche that I wouldn't forget how to tap into my creative side. 

For now I'm going to go work on Autumn so I can finish her and put her up in the store. Pictures soon.

In the meantime, if you're curious about Narcolepsy/Cataplexy check out this. And don't ever ask me to pronounce hypnogogic. Just can't wrap my brain around it. 

Thought Interrupting a Thought

Kidneythieves' Zerospace album is stuck in my head tonight as I patiently wait for my child to slip off to sleep. He hasn't been feeling well so I let him nap when I normally wouldn't. Kind of paying for it now! Oh, well. When you need rest, it must happen.
I've been thinking of other things to draw. Not that I'm finished with what I'm currently working on, I'm just wanting to make a note of potential future projects. Like maybe doing portraits in a fantasy type setting. THAT could be endlessly fun and entertaining. A friend's mom suggested that I draw covers for self-publishing book sites at some point, too. Gather more people to my art.
I get my test prints in from White House Custom Color tomorrow (today, technically) and I'm all kinds of elated over that. This initial order of 8x10 inch test prints was completely free and it should be coming with samples of finishes and different types of paper. I will post when I get them in. Too tired to post much else and I think the little one has finally nodded off. Ciao and as always, thanks for stopping by!
"Mistake in the belief that all I see is with my eyes" - Kidneythieves, Song "Take a Train (Awakening)"

When Dream is on the Horizon

Unlooked for inspiration flows easier into my mind when I'm halfway between awake and dreaming. The night is soothing to me for that reason. The day feels so chaotic, so busy, that I can't properly focus with all that light glaring at me. All the things that have to be done during the day is rushing your life forward so fast that you can't even grasp who and what you are for a comprehensible length of time. The night is a time of reflection for me, of slowing down life enough so that I can drink in my existence and contemplate the existence of others in a greater scope. So quiet. Ah, but I over think.

I'm becoming more "conscious" of that moment right before I drift off. Where my dreams are but shades swirling and attempting to come to life, forming fleeting shapes that I can remember when I wake in the morning. Last night, an image came to me. It was a visual culmination of all the thoughts that had flitted through my brain before I decided to give up and go to bed. This image begs to be drawn but how I'm seeing it, I'm not sure I could pull it off.

A woman screaming with pain, tearing her bright button up shirt open to reveal dark hands reaching out of her chest. Then a moment later the genderless dark figure discards the woman, now a heap of flesh and clothing, onto the ground. It looks relieved. I realize then that it is the woman truly unclothed. I understand what I saw. I mean, wouldn't it be nice to do away with the trivialities of the day to day and get in touch with what's really inside? Like the shadow of ourselves that lives deep within, desperate to be seen? It speaks of a certain degree of spirituality, I think. Breaking away from the material. But it's hard and it's painful to try. So much easier to live in the here and now. (Sigh)

Perhaps I need to put Carl Jung back up on the shelf. And also back away from the astral projection books.

So the perspective of the image I want to draw (the woman screaming) I find a bit daunting, I'm used to the straight on looks, as if we're standing right in front of them, but this woman I'm looking at from above while she has her head tilted down at the hands reaching, her eyes closed. If only I could take a photo. I find it so hard to translate what is in my head onto paper the way I see it. With meditation, it is getting better to keep a grasp on these images for longer periods of time but I don't know if it's going to be long enough. I have so many wild and beautiful things come from my head... agh. But I will attempt it. I found a few images for painful faces for reference. I won't post them here since they are not my images. I'll start on it after I'm finished with project Autumn. I spent too many years bouncing between projects which left so much unfinished.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." - Carl Jung

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” - Carl Jung

Project Autumn

After last night's fiasco with watercolor (grumble, grumble) I resolved that I wouldn't swing the hammer down on myself too hard and instead started drawing earlier this evening on THIS!

Oh, I know. Not much there to see just yet, but there will be. There will be all sorts of autumn flowers surrounding this lady and that right there will be the major challenge. I mean, all those petals. Alas, there will be no color unless I do it digitally at a later date. Oh, but the oranges, and reds... yellows... (pout). Honestly, though, I'm too indecisive about things to physically put color to my drawings. There's a lot of erasing that goes on when I work. 

While I was looking for references for the piece I'm working on, I stumbled across this nifty website called posemaniacs.com. So many poses for people! Now I don't have to slough through google images trying to find the position I'm looking for. Sometimes I just have a hard time getting an arm or a leg to look right, you know? What I find so awesome is that not only is it a picture of the position, but you can move the image around if you don't want to have someone looking dead-on at you. Also, if you have issues eyeballing things, they have a grid option. It's all well categorized too, which drastically reduces the search.  Cool, right?

Alright, folks. So I have some questions for you. What do you like to work with? Oils, pastels, etc.?  Is there another art form you'd like to try for which you are too apprehensive to attempt? How about epic fails? Do you have a hard time throwing those away? 

That's all for today! Thanks for stopping by!