My Narcolepsy Themed Art

Or, "Wolfies and Demons". :D

I got a comment from a fellow artist requesting that I post some art, and as I have been halfway planning to do this for some time, I figure, why not now? A lot of my art is quite relevant to this blog, as I'm constantly drawing things about my dreams and daily experiences with Narcolepsy, and those are the pieces I'm posting here. I find expressing the insanity and frustrations of my illness is a great way to cope. Also, the more humorously I express my feelings, the better I come to feel about the entire thing.

One thing that you have to know before you look at my art is that I'm an anthro or "furry" artist. That means I draw very character-driven art, and that my characters are half-human, half-animals. Furry art is pretty different from the mainstream, so I feel I have to explain it a little. Most furry artists have a "fursona," or furry character that represents themselves, and I am no exception. I almost always draw myself as a wolf person or werewolf (hence my blog pseudonym, "Wolfie"). My art is also quite cartoony, as per furry tradition, though not always as I also have quite a bit of classical training.

Also, you will see the signature along the bottom of each piece is blocked out. This is purely protective of my identity as I always put my real name there after scanning in my work. However, I want this blog to remain anonymous and separate from my other online identities for privacy reasons.

So, without further ado!

About the meds:





These two are both about Xyrem, and feeling like a nutcase for being on something so strong. I'm glad that these don't apply anymore, since I'm happy for now with just the Remeron.

About the Demon:

In addition to having a little wolf character who represents me, I also have a frightening demonic character who represents Narcolepsy itself. I heard a song once that had the line "like demons playing movies in my head" or something similar, and though I still can't find the song again, it made a big impression on me. I think that line is the best description I've found of what I experience when my brain throws dream/nightmare/hallucinations at me. And so, this is the demon who plays movies in my head.



Here's one of my more humorous drawings, of the demon kicking me in the butt. XD



In addition to frightening nightmares, I also have some pretty sweet vivid dreams that I like, so in this cg painting I was trying to express the interplay between the good dreams and bad. The white wolf-creature is a personification of the good things about my dreams, and is battling the nightmare-demon.



I've also been making dreamcatchers for a very long time (early attempts at preventative measures, lol), and this one I made with the above painting in mind:



The inner circle is about good dreams, and includes perfect weaving, pretty little trinkets (including a bell to represent sound), and shiny white ribbon. The outer circle is about nightmares, with uneven weaving and black leather, also interwoven with strange little objects. The hanging part incorporates both dirty bones and pristine white fluffy feathers, to show the intertwining of beautiful and disturbing that regularly shows up in my dreams.

Images From Actual Dreams I've Had:

I saw this dreamcatcher hanging in a room (well, my bedroom, actually) that was dripping with pipes covered in moss. When I woke up I jotted down the design, then actually made it to the best of my ability.



I dream about human skeletons a lot, which is unfortunate because I have a silly phobia of them. I don't know if the phobia of skeleton images came before or after dreaming about stumbling across them in my dreams, but weirdly, they seem to be everywhere in my dreamscapes. Whatever it means, I was excited to take an anatomy class a year or two ago and learn how to draw them so that I could a) attempt to overcome my fear and b) actually record some images from dreams that included them.





This piece is a combination of all the hallucinations I could remember having in high school in my old bedroom. It's actually a pretty clear pen drawing, but I like this blurry photograph of it more- it makes it more disturbing. :D And thus gives it more the feel that I wanted.



I also have some really cool beautiful dreams, from which single images have stood out so much that I've felt inspired.





The Baku:

And lastly, I recently discovered this awesome Japanese folklore creature that eats nightmares. I painted him on a piece of wood because I thought he was really cool, and, let's face it, I need all the help I can get, right? XD



The verse is from a song ("Darkness, Darkness" by Solas) and reads:

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow
Take my hand and let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

And so, there you are. I have other pieces, but I figure this is long enough as it is. I'm sure there will be more later.

Old World Community Center

I had a pretty good night last night until about the middle of my third dose. Then it was crazy dream time.

I think it started off with me standing on the sidewalk next to a quiet city street. It was a pretty typical neighborhood with street lamps and small houses that looked like they were old but well-kept. I walked down the street and turned toward a small apartment building. Up a flight of stairs and down a hallway that was also a balcony I pulled out my key, unlocked a door and went in. My roommate was there- only she wasn't anything like any roommate I've had in real life. She was this artist woman in her 50s who was pretty sick but still smoking cigarettes anyway. She had the living room of our apartment as her art studio. There were paintings and paint and rags and brushes and sculpting stuff lying around everywhere. I was apparently quite a bit younger than I am in real life and she had taken me in. It was interesting because I wasn't really into art at all, it was just something this roommate did.

She had an exhibition of her work at this fancy building and we were there for the next part of the dream. I ran around exploring because the building was really cool. It looked like it had been decorated in England in the 1700s or something, and there was crazy detailed wallpaper, gilded details on the walls and ceiling, and all the wood was dark and old-looking. It had been a manor house at one point and was now converted into a community center of sorts. There were several auditoriums with things going on the same night as the exhibition, including a lecture on autism and a fancy opera. I tried to stand in the back of both to watch for awhile, but you needed a ticket and I didn't have any money, so I just ended up wandering hallways and admiring the decoration.

After awhile it was getting late and my roommate wasn't done with her art event, so I went to the bathrooms and found luxurious bathtubs and showers with lots of plush towels. I decided I might as well take a shower there, and I was mostly done and just drying off when I heard my dachshund barking outside the bathroom. Pretty sure he was getting into trouble, I grabbed a big towel, wrapped it around me and ran out of the bathroom. He was being all bossy at one of the visitors who had come in the door, so I went to grab him. He tried to run away and turned into a very old man, who fell over as I tried to catch his ankle. People were watching us now and I was explaining how it was actually my dog and this was his tactic for avoiding getting in trouble when I woke up. Talk about strange.

High Rise Dog Crash

Last night was full of vivid and crazy but mostly not disturbing dreams. The one I remember was pretty interesting. I was living in an apartment in a high rise on a narrow street in downtown somewhere. I was sitting at a desk in my mostly dark room, and it was night outside my street-facing windows- I was high up, so you could see a spectacular night skyline out there. I was working on things on my laptop. I was getting frustrated because I was trying to set up a business site for my artwork, but I kept running into strange problems, like buttons I was supposed to push randomly disappearing and forms I was supposed to fill out not making any sense whatsoever. I finally thought I had it working, and I was uploading art to it when I looked out the window and saw a small dog leap off of someone else's rooftop right across the street and right in through my windows, smashing a small part of them. The dog was surprised and very angry, and immediately lashed out at my leg. It was a little, springy, ferocious dog with a long nose. I immediately stood up and turned dog whisperer, haha. The dog sat down and stopped attacking me. Thinking fast I grabbed some treats out of the cabinet and we started practicing sit and stay and lie down, which the dog figured out really fast. I knew I just needed to stall until the owner came to pick him up, as I assumed they would do soon since they saw which window the dog jumped into. We had fun doing that, and then we worked on manners a little bit. Suddenly I spotted this huge, red worm on my table- it looked and felt like it was made of jello, but it was definitely alive. I grabbed it with one hand and threw it out into my backyard that I suddenly had, and my hand got all slimy in the process. I offered my slimy hand to the dog, figuring it would gain me points. The dog was a little too eager and bit my hand, but I didn't have time to survey the damage because the owner- and haughty young woman, who didn't even apologize- came in and picked him up. She looked surprised at how calmly he was lying on the floor when she came in. She took him away, and just then two of my friends came in. It was weird because they were both totally made up and didn't look or act quite like any of my actual friends. I told them what had happened and then looked down at my hand to find that my left thumb was chopped off, very cleanly, at the first joint. There was no blood and it looked like something out of a cartoon- a wobbly circle in the center that was white like it was the bone, inside a pink circle inside a thin circle where the skin was. At that point I totally realized it was a dream, and talked to my friends about it and how dreams can be really weird, and then I totally regrew it on the spot. Then we were suddenly at one of the friends' houses at a classy party and I was trying to explain narcolepsy to people because they kept asking me what I'm doing for my career and I didn't feel like making something up. And then I woke up.

New Job Garage Art Frilly Reunion

Weird dreams this morning. o.O

In one dream I was working for this company that apparently helped people edit their papers. It was a kind of fancy looking office and we all had to wear suits. All the furniture was shiny polished hardwood. A client would come in and check in at this library desk, and then the receptionist would send them back to one of our editing cubicles.

It was apparently my first day on the job and my first ever client turned out to be an acquaintance from high school, only in the dream I thought I knew her from Japan. I was relieved to have someone I knew because that way I wouldn't have to be all formal and nervous. We talked for awhile and she gave me a research paper for grad school to edit. It wasn't that hard but I was starting to get sleepy sitting in my comfy armchair. I started to move around, finding excuses to stand up because I needed to wake up again. Unfortunately this strategy backfired and I got really tired and started having trouble pretending I was fine.

The next dream I had took place at my house except that it was still my senior year of college. Our garage was the Carleton ceramics studio, and if you went into the actual house it was nothing but twisting hallways with these framed bold graphic poster-sized drawings hanging neatly on both walls. Apparently I had just finished my senior comps project and was pulling it out to look at everything in the garage. The last person to be in there had left a slide projector and a lamp across the street in a park for some reason, and I was annoyed because it could have easily been stolen. I took both back into the garage but left the garage door open because even though it was foggy outside there would be better light in there that way. I had laid out all of my work on a table and was looking at it. It didn't look great, because the glaze had come out kind of weird and not how I'd planned, but I figured it would work anyway. I had lots of different sizes of dinosaurs and other animals, and the really big ones had lots of detail. The lighting in there was pretty bad and kept getting worse until it occured to me to turn on the light. At one point a giant ceramic owl fell from the rafters and half-smashed on the floor, and I was relieved that it had missed the table and hadn't broken any of my art. People kept coming in and looking at my stuff or just randomly wandering in and out, and one of them was a friend I had in elementary school who I haven't spoken to in many years, only in the dream I apparently still knew her pretty well because we were discussing art stuff. We got onto the subject of making jewelry and she showed me a couple of rediculously impressive little metal pendants she had found somewhere. One of them was shaped like a tiny domed building, and if you opened the little door and looked inside there were tiny metal people dancing (literally moving) under a tiny chandelier. The whole thing was made of gold and on a gold chain.

That dream melded into another one in which I was at a family reunion showing off the little metal building. My grandparents and cousins were all there and we were sitting in chairs around the edge of a small square bedroom with a big fancy bed in the middle. Everything from the curtains to the carpet to the fluffy comforter were pink and frilly. No one thought it was weird to be in there, lol. I mostly listened in on conversations for awhile but people kept talking about things I didn't really understand. Eventually I decided to go home. I was walking around and saying goodbye to everyone when I woke up.

So Much For Resting

Of course, last week I was looking forward to my week off so I could get some much-needed rest. It was a long quarter and a lot more difficult than it really should have been. As soon as my time off started, however, I got about eight different project ideas and decided that the last thing I wanted to do was rest. I should have seen it coming; you'd think by now I would have figured out that being frustrated by how tired I am is going to happen, break or no break.

Even though the frustration is there, it is nice to know that I do have time to recover after overextending myself working on things. It's also been nice to not get in my car. The drawback is that when you're enjoying not driving a lot, and then you have to, it kind of sucks ten times more than usual.

My dad's car has been in the shop all week with major issues and there has therefore been a lot of car drama. Take Friday, for example, when all three of us needed a car for work or class. My dad ended up taking his beautiful restored '61 Impala to work (hoping it would make it all the way there, as it's been a long time since it did more than drive around the neighborhood) after no one could carpool. Then my parents were going to go pick it up over the weekend but it wasn't ready. My mom left on her weekly business travels, which left me as the only person to help dad pick up his car today.

I was dreading it all weekend. All the car dealerships are always out of town way west of our house, in parts of the city that I don't know. The highway is really the only way to get there and back if you don't want to spend forever and we all know by now how much I hate highways.

My dad came home and found out the car wouldn't be ready until this evening, basically during rush hour. And I started getting even more nervous as dark and thundery clouds started to gather- of course, off in the direction we would be going.

I think my dad could tell I was getting anxious, because he offered to avoid highways on the way home and didn't make me drive on the way there. I was really grateful for that. We got there through a bunch of rain and traffic and then I had to follow him home as it was getting dark. Because we were avoiding the highway it took almost 45 minutes. It was hard. We spent a lot of time on a road with lots of sharp curves that I mostly didn't appreciate (at least it was scenic). I stayed alert for most of the drive out of pure fear, but then the exhaustion started to creep up on me and I had to blast air conditioning uncomfortably and turn the music up too loud in order to keep myself from zoning out and drifting off. I was so happy to get home safely after that.

I've decided that avoiding driving too much might not be the best plan either, because then when I have to I'm more afraid. So tomorrow I think I'll go get an icee after lunch and maybe look for some earrings. Another week and I'll be allowed to start changing them out, yay.

Three-Dimensional Day

Today was very interesting to look at, thanks to Xyrem and a little caffeine. The highlight was when I ran an errand and was amazed by the 3Dness of a parking lot. And yes, I would describe myself as easily amused, lol.

For I don't even know how long- possibly more than ten years- my visual world has been pretty flat. It took me awhile, but eventually I figured out that my senses are actually pretty dulled compared to most people. Even though I'm a visual person and my eyes work just fine with a little help from contacts, my brain really doesn't sort the information out very well. The funny thing is that until I first started Xyrem, I didn't have any idea. As a result, I thought it was stupidity causing me to run smack into things all the time. My friends never let me live it down after I ran straight into a pole at school once- then turned right around and hit another one, haha. What's really funny, though, is what came out in drawing classes.

Drawing from life has always been really easy for me, probably because my unusually flat vision translates well onto 2D paper. The bane of my drawing life for a long time, though, was perspective drawing. I could never get it right. I would eyeball the angles, they would look right compared to the hallway or building corner or whatever it was I was looking at, but the finished drawing would have so much depth that I was convinced it was wrong. I would erase and redraw everything to be the right amount of depth, but then the angles were all off and I would get hopelessly frustrated. To make it even more confusing, my too-deep drawings would get the better grades and when I asked teachers for help, that's the direction they would steer me. The whole thing drove me crazy because when I got it right it would look really wrong compared to what I was actually seeing.

Six drawing classes worth of confusing perspective drawings later, I started on Xyrem. I remember very clearly the first time I was awake enough to see something in a 3D fashion- I sat up in bed and looked at my door, which was open. It was jutting out at me really freaking far. I was shocked. I looked around and for the first time in god knows how long actually saw the space between objects. I started wandering around the house, staring at things from different angles. It was a whole new world.

Every time I've raised my dose, I've been struck with a better sense of three dimensions. It's like there are endless levels of it and I keep moving up- and each time it surprises and delights me. My parents are now used to me wandering around staring at stuff and walking in circles around furniture. It really amuses all of us.

By far my favorite thing to look at when getting an upgrade are trees. They completely astound me with how complicatedly 3D they are. In the opposite way clouds are cool because they're subtle enough that I can very rarely see the space around them, but when I do it's amazing.

So today I went to get some bubble tea and came out of the store into a strikingly 3D parking lot with really 3D cars and people in it. It had been noticable on my way in, but the caffeine gave me just enough more awakeness to bump it up a notch. I looked around and smiled at people, doing my best not to look too much like being in a parking lot was the highlight of my day, lol. When driving home I was good and only stared at trees when stopped at lights. Walking my dog was also fun. The sidewalk seemed to go on forever in front of us.

I'm about to hit the highest dose of Xyrem, so the days of amazement will most likely end for now. I will get used to this level and stop noticing so much. But it's definitely something I will never take for granted.

Not Dead Yet

Most of a week of antibiotics later I'm doing a little better. I'm less gunky and have a little more energy and my stomach at least hasn't fallen out yet, even though it feels like it wants to. I had the weirdest night sleep ever for a couple of nights- I actually was completely out in three hour spurts, with no dreams, hallucinations or even awareness mixed in. I'm pretty sure that's what it's like for normal people when they sleep, or at least that's what I've heard, haha. But it is sad to not have any bizarre dream stories to tell.

I'm very impressed, however, with the fact that I'm mostly caught up with homework right now. I say mostly because I'm still trying to figure out this week's Flash homework, which I unfortunately missed the lecture on. The instructor sent me links to tutorials, which are helping a little, but I'm easily frustrated with these things because I have such a clear picture of exactly what I want and computer programs tend to get in the way. I can't help thinking how much easier it would be to just draw the damn thing on a piece of paper, which is silly because the point of this class is to learn the software. I'm pretty confident that I can figure this out, though. Definitely with three more days of fiddling.

Of course because there's absolutely no way I have the energy to work on non-homework art right now, I'm suddenly struck with a lot of inspiration. That always seems to happen- as soon as I have some free time and energy, I don't have any good ideas, but the second I have homework to do, am sick and have even less energy than usual, I get tons of great ideas. Right now I have at least five. Well, maybe after this week I'll be feeling good enough to get some of it on paper in addition to everything else I need to do.

Anything But Art

Last night was one heck of a light show for me. I had at least two very interesting dreams with unbelievably gorgeous scenery. In the first, I was a little kid at a big family reunion- I was hanging out with a bunch of my cousins. I wasn't me, but a little boy, and the family wasn't my real one either. But all the kids were going on this really fun scavenger hunt in this scenic woodsy place on a lake, and we rode in canoes and camped on the shore and looked at the stars. And we were listening to these legends that the older folks were telling. It was really fun. When I started to wake up I fought it because we were about to find whatever we were looking for in the scavenger hunt and I wanted to see what it was- but instead of that dream going on, I ended up in a different one in which I was riding in this... actually it might have been a hot air balloon now that I think about it. I was floating past this night city skyline, but the lights in the buildings were all colors of the rainbow, making it even more beautiful than usual. And then a fireworks show started behind the buildings. The image has stuck in my mind all day because it was so amazing. It may need to be drawn. But we'll see how that goes. I've had a pretty stubborn form of art block for awhile now. But maybe I ought to rewind a bit.

I've been drawing since I was two years old. I still have some of my really early stuff, which is, of course, hilarious. In elementary school I was a very well-behaved student (and hopeless teacher's pet, haha), but still managed to get in trouble for drawing when I was supposed to be paying attention. At that time I was mostly inspired by Disney, as you might expect, and various cartoons (like Doug and Rugrats). I had my own myriad of characters that only got more complicated as I got older. In middle school I discovered the internet, and through that a whole host of artists, especially furry art (otherwise known as "anthro" for "anthropomorphism"), which is basically about characters that are some combination of human and animal. At that point, when I was about thirteen, I started to conciously work to improve my drawings. That was when I really got serious about my art, which was literally what got me through high school. Art has always been how I deal with life.

This is something that has been difficult to get across to my esteemed family members however. I learned early on to avoid the truth when adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, because if I said "artist" they would laugh and tell me I needed something that makes money. My parents walked a very careful line between encouraging me to be creative and warning me off of art as a profession (they're both scientists, and wanted something more academic for me). We got in many fights during my awful high school experience when I would insist on slipping some art in between my mounds of impossible homework and constant need to nap. I fought them only because I knew that art was absolutely essential to my survival of daily life. But things didn't come to a head until college, when my illness caught up with me and, forced to choose between my two majors in my last year, I chose the one they didn't like- art, of course. That was one phone call I'll never forget. There was a lot of shouting on one side and crying on the other. But once it was done, they did what they always have done- they turned right around and supported me in what I wanted to do. And when I came home, decided I wanted to take classes in animation and go forth and make movies someday, they provided the support and the funds. I've spent the last year trying to convince them that you can, in fact, make money by being good at drawing, and I think I'm finally getting there.

The main problem I have now is this long term art block. But I think I know what's going on there. For years now I've been working on finding a way to really face what I've seen and heard and felt in my dreams because of how much that's effected me. And it's difficult for me to express, but I think I'm finally starting to get there. Once I've dredged up that stuff and gotten it out, I think I'll feel much better about life and can go back to the colorful character drawings I've always done. But in the meantime, I'm having a hard time making any art. Also, I often find myself very inspired, but lacking the energy I need to accomplish anything. I'm learning slowly that the days of me chugging out a piece in a day or two of straight working are over, at least for now. I'm taking things slower and stopping when I'm tired and coming back later. But maybe something really good will come out of this, eventually.

Also, then I can show people and creep them out, which is always fun, haha. I get way too much entertainment out of creeping people out. XD