Dreamtime: Love Field

Initial Inspirations

I searched ArtStor for inspiration and was attracted to the colors in these images. The rose and quote in the last two pictures inspired me to focus the theme of my dreamtime piece on love.

Creating a concept

After deciding to base my dream time around love, I brainstormed different ways to represent love and incorporate those representations into a pattern. I was reminded of a song I like called “Dallas Love Field” and decided to recreate my visualization of the location.

Execution and final product

I drew a blade of grass, which I then duplicated and manipulated until I had a patch of grass to turn into a pattern. I used an eyedropper tool to capture the colors in my inspiration photos. I then used those colors in the my gradients for the sky and grass. To evoke surrealism in the underworld piece, I drew my own interpretation of heart eyes just floating around.

Process:

I began this project by searching for inspiration on ArtStor. I found images with color palettes as well as concepts that appealed to me. By the end of my search I had a collection of pictures with a multitude of pink and purple hues. Two of my selected images related to love. I was naturally drawn to and immediately excited by this theme because I’m a lover boy/hopeless romantic at heart. At first I struggled with ways to represent the idea of love in a pattern for my dreamtime pieces. I experimented with rose petals, eyes and paisleys, but nothing clicked. On my way home one day, the song “Dallas Love Field” by Henry Jamison played. While smiling in appreciation of the title, I realized that I could base my dreamtime pieces off of a visualization of Dallas Love Field as a geographic location. My first piece is a representation of the “actual” Dallas Love Field, while my second is a surreal underworld version.

For my first piece, I decided to use the pink and purple palette from my collected source images in the grass and sky gradients to subtly imply a warm fuzzy feeling (similar to the stereotypical sensation of being in love). The silhouette in the middle of the field is an allusion to the album cover of the song. Henry Jamison is standing in the middle of the picture, with his arms at his side (except the arm holding his umbrella) and his feet together. I made the silhouette in an almost identical position and added a wide brimmed hat. To incorporate the documentation of my process, I included the progression of my grass pattern in the white blades at the front of the field.

I started the underworld piece by deleting everything but the grass gradient. I created the gradient by selecting the negative space of the grass pattern and creating a gradient fill layer, so the shape of the pattern was retained when I deleted everything else. There isn’t a lot of activity, nor are there many objects to fill the empty space in the first piece. However, I think the warm colors in the sky gradient make the composition feel “fuller” than it is. I originally wanted to make the underworld piece feel just as full, however, after seeing the bleakness of the black background I changed my mind. I decided that the underworld would depict the scary part of love that makes you feel uncertain and a little afraid. The heart eyes, though filled with love, are meant to feel a bit creepy. In addition, the warm fuzzy hues of the grass gradient have a different effect when contrasted with black. They feel sharper and more dangerous, but not altogether unwelcoming. Love can be that way sometimes.

Although I’m happy with my digital depictions of Dallas Love Field and the concept behind my pieces, I’m much happier with the small sketch in my sketchbook. The gestural strokes of grass give the image much more movement which I like a lot. I struggled to achieve the same effect in illustrator. I also liked the small bits of the silhouette that didn’t end up getting filled in by my pen. I think the small imperfections of the sketch end up evoking more emotion than either of the digital versions do. In the future, I would like to either find a way to better translate the feeling of the sketch into the digital format, or recreate these pieces by hand.