Strange brain treasures as source material
The dream (dream) job
I am starting this story way back in my childhood. Bear with me, I’ll get to the brain treasures and the dream (dream) job in a minute.
I am sure I told you this before, but as a child I used to have a recurring dream of wolves floating up to the living room window. In my dream I would run downstairs to my bedroom, and they would drift down to that window and just float there. They never tapped the glass or tried to get in, they just floated there… It was terrifying.
I drew this memory for a hashtag I started: #childhoodillustrated (for drawings of our memorable moments from childhood, join in!) and I popped it on Instagram.
At The Good Ship Illustration we often talk about the importance of showing who you are in your work and sharing it online, and this is why:
Walker Books saw this piece, which is older and spookier than the picture book work I usually do and thought I might like to illustrate one of Jospeh Coelho’s stories for a book he’d written called Ten Word Tiny Tales. Each story is only ten words long, and every one of them is a razor sharp, mildly disturbing gem. They sent me the stories to read and I could hardly believe it when I read this little beauty:
‘Invite me in,’ she says outside my tenth storey window.
I knew ‘she’ had to be a wolf from my childhood dreams.
My other source of inspiration was the Red Road flats in Glasgow. When I was at Art School my friend Mike lived in the famous Red Road flats and we used to hang out there cooking pasta with tinned toms and Tabasco followed by Maryland Cookies (my staple diet at art school). The flats were so high you could feel them swaying in the wind and they still had their original 1960’s kitchens with checkerboard floor tiles. They were incredible, strange and other worldly. I did a google search and found some photos taken just before they were demolished in 2015 and based my illustration on one of those amazing photos.
It turns out that Joseph Coelho was brought up in the high rise flats in Roehampton, which coincidentally, I used to walk past regularly when I lived in Putney. Small world!
Let’s get practical
For those of you who, like me, NEED to know how work is made, I’ll show you around behind the scenes.
I started by doing a rough drawing, then I tried a colour piece on Procreate, wondering if that might be the final artwork. But it looked a bit blurry. Being a big book done on a small screen it lacked clarity and maybe some intention in the line… I can’t quite put my finger on it. So I went back to my old pals, paper and paint.
My editor, Dee, asked me to focus less on the wallpaper and more on the girl and the wolf. Good call, this story isn’t about wallpaper! I love a good editor for this sort of cool outside eye, I don’t always notice these things when I am really involved in a project.
I kept the colour palette very tight, just blue, purple and a tiny bit of green to give it a claustrophobic feel. I learned this secret colour trick from Tania Willis and her wonderful colour workshop inside the Good Ship picture book course.
Weird tangent
My pal Alice Wood, who works behind the scenes at The Good Ship as our chief lifeguard, sent me a link to this piece about Freud and The Wolf Man.
The Wolf Man's dream is one of the most famous dreams in the history of psychoanalysis.
“Suddenly, the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on a big walnut tree in front of the window.”
It was the harrowing childhood nightmare of Sergei Pankejeff (1886-1979), who was one of Freud’s most famous patients. The dream is so famous that Pankejeff later became known as the ‘Wolf Man’.
The night before his 4th birthday, Pankejeff dreamed that he was lying in bed when all of a sudden the window swung open.
Peering out, he saw six or seven white wolves sitting in the tree outside his bedroom, their eyes fixed on him. Terrified by their gaze, he woke up screaming.
He made a sketch of the dream for Freud, and in later life produced several paintings of it, two of which are on display in the Freud Museum London.
Freud deduced that the dream symbolised a trauma: that the Wolf Man, as a toddler, had witnessed his parents having intercourse. That didn’t happen to me 😮💨 and I am not really into Freud. I have had a lot of psychotherapy and Freud didn’t get much of a look in. I had so many strange dreams as a child I don’t think we even got to this one!
I prefer what Joseph Coelho told me: whoever appears in your dreams is an aspect of yourself. I am cool with being part floating wolf.
This was a dream (dream) job for me. You don’t get many like this. I got to illustrate something a little older, and dig into my childhood memories. It was thrilling! That recurring wolf dream was disturbing as a child but now I am so thankful that I had it. It is stored in there (pointing at ma head) along with a million other strange brain treasures as source material.
This job is a nice reminder to myself of the importance of carving out time to do self motivated work, expressing who we are in our work, and sharing it with the world.
Share your weirdness and get amazing work that doesn’t even feel like work!
Ten Word Tiny Tales is available for pre order now and it really helps the authors and illustrators if you order early because the bookshops will feel confident in ordering nice big piles for their front tables.
‘Is it possible to spin a tale using just ten words? It most certainly is! In this unique and magnificent compendium designed to spark the imagination, Joseph Coelho brings us stories of underwater worlds, demon hamsters, bears in outer space, and portals to places unknown ... all in just ten words! Each tale has been paired with one of the finest illustrators working today – and, together, the words and pictures will create a space for creativity as young readers imagine how the story might unravel. They might even be inspired to pen a ten word tiny tale of their own!’
Prefaced by a note from Joseph Coelho, and with two creative writing challenges at the back, this is the perfect gift for all those ready to unleash their imaginations.’
Walker Books
Have you made artwork inspired by dreams? Or drawn something from your memories? Did you express your weirdness and get an amazing job? Tell me your dreams, go on, I love how strange our subconscious brains are.
Love Helenx
See ya!
P.S. Join me and my pal
for a co-working session on Monday 3rd July, open to everyone and free to attend.
I love how you've illustrated your childhood dream. One recurring dream used to be that I was chewing gum and then it would get too sticky and my teeth would get stuck together. I'm not sure the world wants to see me illustrate that, ha ha! I need to dig deeper I think. I wish I'd had a dream with wolves in. That seems more fun to draw ;-P Thanks for inspiring us all! x
What a beautiful image such a haunting dream! 😳Have you thought about written and illustrated spooky stories? I feel like you’d do it brilliantly!