Monday, May 21, 2018

late to the party

This blog reviews images from my waking life that influence the images of my dreams.

This post reviews images from this entry in my dream journal maboroshi no yume.

Every once in a while, whenever I have some free time, I like to do drawings that I spend a little more time on. I draw slow. So I usually need a whole evening to draw something. Anyway, last night I made this drawing.


The drawing is of Abby Veiga and Olivia Magni dancing to the song "Together" at the Jump dance competition in Los Angeles. Here's the source image.


Here's the video I got the image from, on the Dancing with YT channel on YouTube.


This performance by Abby Veiga and Olivia Magni, choreographed by Jessica Monnig, is really incredible.

I feel like my drawing didn't do the dance, or the beautiful dancers, much justice -- mainly because I was a bit too heavy-handed with my pen.

Since I only draw occasionally, other than in my dream journals, I still have trouble putting together different parts of a drawing. So in this drawing, I feel happy with the bodies, the poses, and the proportions, as well as the gold parts of the costumes. But I'm not very happy with the faces. And I could even sense yesterday when I went wrong with them. And that stuck with me all night.

So I'm not surprised I dreamed of being in a sort of reclining position with a girl. I think I was trying to get into the moment of the dance. But I guess my preconscious took things a little bit further.

But I don't think the girl in my dreams looked like either Abby Veiga or Olivia Magni. There may have been a bit of a resemblance to other girls I have been thinking about a lot recently, though I'm not sure the girl looked like one of them, either.

One dancer I've drawn a lot is Olivia Taylor. I started paying attention to little dancers because of Maddie Ziegler in the MV for the Sia song "Chandelier." But the first little dancer besides Zielger that I paid attention to was Olivia Taylor. She's probably still my favorite young competitive dancer, though I don't feel like I see stuff of hers pop up on YouTube as often nowadays.


Taylor is an incredible dancer. But she's also incredibly beautiful. Here's a photo of her.


Another girl I've been thinking about a lot lately is Laneya Grace. One of the big reasons I think about her is because I feel like she looks a lot like Olivia Taylor. Here's a picture of Grace, which I think is by Amy Wenzel.


Anyway, I was thinking about Laneya Grace a lot because of her role as the little girl in the MV for Avicii's song "Wake Me Up."


But I think last night I thought of Olivia Taylor a lot because -- I've tried drawing her a lot and I feel like I never do her beauty any justice.

The oatmeal on the stove, by the way, came from a movie I watched recently, Nicholas Ray's film Party Girl, starring Cyd Charisse.


There's a scene right at the beginning where Charisse burns her hand on a pot of cocoa. That burn leads to a scene I was sort of shocked to find in a 1958 studio film like Party Girl. So that's why the oatmeal was burning on the stove in my dream.

There are some things, too, that relate to my family. Obviously at the end of the dream there's a relative of mine, who kind of makes the whole situation seem like a family situation -- which it very well could have been.

But I've dealt with some inner conflict over the weekend because of family stuff. And I've felt like a failure because of it. Yet, when I started drawing, I forgot all about the family stuff.

However, when I got so critical of myself for my drawing, I think that made me think about my family again. I think I felt pretty pathetic... worrying about some drawing, when I should really have been thinking about all the family stuff.

So I think the family imagery in my dreams comes from that. A lot of that conflict of wanting to resolve things with my family once and for all, so we can all just be happy together, but just messing it up all the time. And trying to find a way to make that immature amateur artist in me reconcile with my adult self so I can just finally be a good relative to my family.

But I don't think I'm totally there. Obviously, my brain didn't hit the mark with that goal. My preconscious had other problems to solve. I'm just not totally sure what those problems were.

No comments:

Post a Comment