Don’t be afraid to chase your dreams. But be very afraid to lose yourself in them.

The Motivation

Like many people, I always have this lingering feeling like I’m not reaching my full potential.

And whether that comes from my own inadequacies or from external factors, this is a reality that I am responsible for confronting and dealing with.

This feeling was the driving inspiration behind this project. To show a being of limitless potential held down by, what is ultimately his own actions. Being able to acknowledge and encourage the power within others but absolutely failing to do the same for himself.

Like all of my work, this drawing, and the epiphany that accompanied it, marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life, where I become aware of this fact and take meaningful action to correct it.

Creating the Reference Image

This visual had been in the back of my mind for a long time.

I just didn’t know how to bring it to life using the tools and skills I had available to me. But in the prior months, I had started to use this motif in my drawings of light shining from the eyes, symbolizing realization, awareness, enlightenment. Then one day, like the very theme I was trying to communicate, everything just fell into place.

I use Procreate to edit my images and it’s simple enough to just white out a face and put a blur on it to make it look like it’s glowing. But the key to making this visual possible was getting that authentic look of brilliant light shining through the flesh of my fingers. And I achieved that with my balanced-arm lamp — a source of light about the size of my face. I placed my hands over it and the rest was history.

Drawing

There were a few factors that went into my decision to make this drawing as big as it was.

The meaning behind the visual was extremely significant for me personally and I wanted the scale to reflect that monumentality — the daunting, imposing and intimidating gravity with which this theme has been looming over me as of late.
I wanted to put in actual effort to grow a following for my artwork on social media and there’s no better way to do that than spectacle — to show people something interesting — and that’s what I aimed to do with the 3 x 3 foot size of this project.

It was a hell of a task to plan and draw this monstrosity.

There were a few significant mistakes I made during the process but I persevered through all of the self doubt, the fear and all of my hesitations to complete it and I ultimately conquered this beast. A small victory in the grand scheme of my life but a victory nonetheless — signifying the very changes in myself that this piece was meant to represent.

This experience was living poetry.

Watch the full process

And here we have my best video to date. By this point I was a good bunch of videos into my YouTube endeavour and I knew a little more about what works and what doesn’t. On it’s own, the process of drawing a picture like this is kind of long and dull to watch but I feel like I was able to cut it together into a concise and relaxing watch.

Let me know in the comments if I pulled it off, it helps me in the algorithm too.

Watch on Youtube

Puer Aeternus

Only after completing this project, did I come across a term that already exists which perfectly encapsulates the theme and the original inspiration behind this drawing:

Puer aeternus (Latin for “eternal boy”) is a psychological archetype, popularized by Carl Jung, describing a person, often male, who remains emotionally adolescent, full of potential but afraid of commitment and responsibility, leading to a “failure to launch” into mature adulthood. They possess charm and creativity but struggle with procrastination, unfinished projects, and an idealized “provisional life,” often manifesting as “Peter Pan syndrome”.

And so, I found the title for my most precious creation, thus bringing this months-long endeavour to a close.