365 Days of Art: A dream you had

63. A dream you had

The above picture is for challenge number 63 on my 365 Days of Art list; that's "A dream you had".

This was the most recent dream I had before I started this drawing, but I had to decide between this one and another I had last year, in which I was travelling through space inside a mechanical swan and then went to a fair in it and met some Victorian people or the space opera type dream I had. I did also consider some of my recurring dreams, but those always seem to be rather unpleasant and would be difficult to draw, as I usually experience them from more than one person's perspective at once (it's difficult to describe). 

Anyway, this dream was pretty tame compared to the ones I normally have, but the sound was unusual for me, and the way I woke up was different as well. I will say here too that it was all from my point of view, which is also very unusual for me. I've drawn one image for this so far, but I might add another at some point. If I do, I'll add a link back here in a future entry.

So, on with the dream...



...it was set in an unfamiliar city and there was the feeling of people all around, but the streets looked unnaturally deserted. Everything seemed cold (it seemed like it had been snowing, but I couldn't see any snow) and was in hues of grey, though I could tell that sunlight - or some kind of bright light - was tinting things slightly in places. There was no sound, except for an unsettling avant-garde, instrumental electronic/indie rock track playing on a loop in the background, so the whole thing seemed like a slightly surreal music video. 

I was inside a ground level office building, looking out of a huge window, directly opposite another building - a cafe - that also had a huge window at the front. Inside the cafe, I could see someone sitting, drinking something from a teacup (though I don't think it was tea). They were dressed completely in red; wide-brimmed hat, long jacket, long skirt, shawl, had a very pale face, no ears, and skeleton hands. They didn't seem to have a particular gender either. I should note that their eyes were extremely large, as though they were a humanoid tarsier or something, though I haven't depicted their ocular area as huge as it was. 

Although I couldn't see anyone else in the cafe with them, it seemed like there were others there, just like in the city. When they noticed me looking at them, they put their teacup down and looked somewhat shocked that I could see them. They stood up and stared at me, in a way that didn't look creepy but felt it, for what seemed like a really long time. Then they just weren't there anymore, so I walked out of the office building to try and find them. (Apparently, I like weird tarsier people with skeleton hands staring at me in a threatening manner!)

When I was outside, I found that there were no doors on any of the other buildings, even the cafe, so I had to keep walking. I eventually got to a large, grey stone/brick building that had a big metal door at the side. It opened with a loud creak and when I got inside I found that it was a massive warehouse, again completely grey inside, with a dirt floor. It was completely empty except for a white, plastic push button telephone that was set on a pedestal in the middle of the room.  

A young woman with blonde hair in a ponytail and freckles suddenly appeared next to it out of nowhere. She didn't seem to notice that I was there, but was looking at something behind me. She started to get very agitated and looked as though she was afraid of whatever she could see, so I turned to see what it was. There was a figure standing in the corner, but I couldn't make out any of its features, it was just standing there like a shadow. I didn't like that it was there, so I moved away from it a little, but it didn't seem to notice me either. Suddenly it ran towards the young woman and then they were both gone.

I felt very uneasy at that point, and then I noticed another figure in the opposite corner, but this one definitely "saw" that I was there, even though it didn't appear to have any eyes. I looked at the phone and bits of the pedestal were disappearing, but I knew I had to get to the phone before the "shadow" got to me. So I ran over to the phone and picked it up, but the numbers started disappearing. I still began dialling the phone number of my house, assuming where the digits were, as the "shadow" was coming towards me. It touched my arm, and just as I was about to press the last number on the phone, I woke up.