Well, it does go a little deeper than that but that experience of my first truly devastating heartbreak was what eventually led to this visual developing in my mind. I’ll try not to reveal too much but what really lined me up for the brutal kick in the nuts that this experience delivered to me was a prior experience I had in college.
Well dear reader, as softly as I can put it, one of my professors convinced me that I was doomed for failure; that my whole life, I had been working toward nothing, I am weak, I have nothing, I am nothing and I will never amount to anything. I will struggle, alone and without end, and I will burden my family like the boulder burdened Sisyphus until one special day, when I finally gain the courage to end my own life.
To be fair he never explicitly said those words to me but his methods for teaching his students, or to put it more accurately, “weeding us out” (these words, he did say to my class), coupled with my innocent and inexperienced 18 year old mental state, just looking for guidance and support, led directly to this toxic headspace I unfortunately remained imprisoned within for the following decade.
I came out of it with the help of a girl I met a few years later and as you might expect, bonding with a person in such a vulnerable state, I caught feelings for her. Very strong, unhealthy and co-dependent feelings lol. I’ll skip over the following few years and just say that it didn’t work out like I thought it would. I don’t hold any ill will toward her or blame her for anything — it’s just the way things go sometimes.
And just like my professor shot me down from the shaky stack of milk crates I founded my identity upon before him, she shot me down from the new shaky stack of milk crates I founded my identity upon after him, which kinda surprised me, considering I used tape the second time …
Jokes aside, after the second total identity crisis I had in 10 years, I was kind of a mess. And when the dust settled, I could finally see the mistake I was making then and now; I was dreaming.
I had a tendency to base my peace of mind on things that were not certain. I was an idealist and I believed what people told me, without putting in the work to understand them and prove them for myself. It’s like I was sleepwalking through my own life — and that tendency tore me to shreds, twice.
If trauma like that doesn’t warrant some new artwork then I don’t know what would.
With these ideas in mind, it was just a simple step forward to envision the central theme of this piece to be hypnosis. Initially the working title was “The Call of the Void”, inspired by the overwhelming effects that the monsters of H.P. Lovecraft had on the insignificant minds of the puny humans who narrated his books.
I likened this to real world examples of hypnosis like addiction, false love or self loathing. Visually, my mind went to this moment in Candyman (1992) where Helen first encounters the Candyman. She immediately falls into this trance-like state which initiates her descent into insanity throughout the rest of the film.
It was this look that consumed me.
A look I saw as all encompassing infatuation; rapture; absolute, naive and ignorant love. “Whether it serves me right or skins me alive, I will believe in you and I will love you forever, beyond the bounds of my existence.”
So now that I had the base of my image, I needed to enhance it to really make it my own and tailor it to the message I wanted to communicate. Again, being a total film nerd I went back to film. Spirals in the eyes has long been universally symbolic of hypnosis. In Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958), I found the perfect realistic representation of this symbol.
In the original shot of Helen, I was not satisfied with the tears. I needed the sadness to stand out more. And for this, I went back to an image I believe I first saw on Tumblr many years ago but always stuck in my mind. It’s a simple close up on the eyes of a statue of the Virgin Mary but I always found it to be a powerful, memorable image.
So I loaded up Photoshop and combined these elements to develop the final reference image.
I added a grid and got to work.
With all the creative heavy lifting done, what I consider to be the admin tasks of what I do, I was now free to just draw what I see. I love how the eyes came out. I kept in mind that the spirals were a reflection sitting upon the striations of the iris so I improvised how the light of the spiral would interact with the light of the iris. I think I pulled this off well.
It was also just a perfect coincidence that the angles of the faces of both Helen and the Virgin Mary were so similar. The light beautifully shines through the left-most tear to cast light within it’s shadow. This lends incredibly to the sense of realism in the drawing.
I’ve used resin on my realistic drawings before but I must say, I was on a new level of anxiety with this one. With how meaningful the image was to me, with how happy I was with the final result, I did not want to risk ruining it.
But, no pain no gain. And guess what, I ruined it LOL.
I had this genius idea to tape the edges of the wood panel in a way that created a dam to hold all of the resin on top of the image. I wanted it to literally look like a sheet of glass sitting on top of a wood panel. No run off, no dripping, just a perfect, clean and controlled work of art.
But I learned then that resin needs room to either expand or contract as it cures. And the next day I woke up to a waking nightmare. The surface of the resin was madly uneven. It was lumpy, pooled to one corner and the cherry on top, some had drained through the tape here and there and left reflective paths of resin along a few portions of the side of the panel.
Thankfully, with Art Resin, this isn’t the end of the world. Following their directions, I scrubbed and scratched up the surface of the cured resin to create a grain for the new resin to hold onto, mixed up a new batch, poured it again and after another 3 excruciatingly anxious days waiting for it to cure again, I breathed an immense sigh of relief when I saw the smooth, glossy surface I originally envisioned.
Only a Dream ended up being the first project I ever recorded myself drawing. It was also the first reel I ever posted on Instagram and even to this day, with over 7,000 views and over 600 likes, it’s my most successful reel. Idk I think since there’s been like a billion reels posted since I posted mine, the market is kinda saturated and harder to stand out.
But this reel also gave me what I consider to be one of the greatest achievements of my art career. Virginia Madsen, the real Hollywood actress who played Helen in Candyman, one of my favourite horror movies and the woman depicted in the drawing; she somehow discovered my drawing, she liked it, complimented me in the comments, shared it to her story AND we even had a little conversation in the DMs.
I’m not the type to lose my mind over celebrities but man I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t melting a little.
I’m doing well, thanks for asking. I accomplished some things, made some money, found new purpose in my life and dare I say, a much more stable sense of self. I like to consider myself to just be more aware, realistic and skeptical. I know what I know and I’m unafraid to admit when I don’t know.
The thought of loss doesn’t weigh on me so much anymore because I know I can handle it now. I sat on the brink, looked down over the edge and was able to come back down and draw some neat pictures about it.
If you ask me, that’s security you can’t buy.