I drew this quickly over the course of an hour, in response to a very powerful dream I had last night. The image was so vivid that I wanted to capture this pose, this smile, the sunlight shining upon her.
I rarely talk about my dreams, even the most vivid ones. This one, however, hit me different. It hit me with a joy that compelled me to share this with others around me. If ever the figure in my dream is real, I would love to meet her and shake her hand.
In the dream, I was watching a documentary. This lady, whose name was never revealed to me in the dream, was a poet and dramatist, and she spoke English in a harsh, guttural accent I'd never heard before — presumably because 1) she was from a different country 2) whose native people's accents were never put front and centre in a piece of media before that point. I was watching this documentary with subtitles on, and I was just hooked on it.
(A disclaimer: I am not Indigenous. I am of mixed Indian descent. I can't place the lady's ethnicity or accent, but for some reason, my heart leans towards her being Indigenous of some kind.)
The documentary was following this lady's journey into the professions of writing, filmmaking, and theatre directing. It was inspiring.
The interviewer was asking her questions, and the camera crew filmed shots of her and of the train she was on. In response to people saying she shouldn't have spoken English because of her apparent lack of enunciation, she responded with such a beautiful smile and so much grace. She said, "English is my language. I love to use it."
I've not been able to put any colour into this image yet, and in my drawing, all that you see there is monochrome. But in the dream, the train was a bleak grey inside, broken only by this lady's subtle colour and the glorious sunlight pouring in. She had dark brown hair in big curls, with subtle highlights of pink and purple. Her hoodie was grey and her trousers were an even darker grey, but she had a thing for subtle glitter makeup. She had a pink and purple glitter star on her left cheek, which gave me David Bowie vibes. The elbows had been patched with dark pink and purple cloth.