An image from an Unidentified Flying Dream

March 9, 2020

Capturing an idea seen in a dream
I once wrote my dreams down regularly in a notebook by my bed. By doing that I found I was able to retain dreams much more clearly.
One night I had quite a clear dream of a strange flying object coming up over a hill and right past me. It was an incredible looking machine – very sophisticated and clean, well designed. It made quite an impact on me because I remembered it clearly next morning. I created a pencil drawing of it in a collage-style sketchbook that I was using at the time.

My original pencil drawing of the DreamShip

Defining the shapes more

Fast forward to today... It occurred to me that this image would be fun to render out as a colored version. The pencil drawing suggests many shapes without clarifying how they connect - lines that fade out for example. This is typically what I face when converting a drawing into a vector piece.
A quick, loose drawing allowed me to define some of the shapes and areas better, to decide where the soft blends ended.

Creating the vector image in Adobe Illustrator

Once I get all the shapes drawn out, I begin giving them grey values to refine the layers so that everything is in the correct hierarchy. With that accomplished, it is just a matter of developing a color palette and finessing everything for contrast, detail and all that.

The finished piece