Doodle Roundup: dreams

Written by Patrick J Turner Jr

Published on August 25th, 2023

Hello friends. I have been visited by some recurring dreams lately. Well, some of them are recurring nightmares. This can be pretty frustrating as they can be intrusive and affect the quality of my sleep. They usually come without warning and I have not been able to discern a consistent trigger for these dreams. If dreams are truly just the brain's way of sorting thoughts from the day before, I suppose my recurring dreams must be caused by some conscious or subconscious thought experienced during my waking hours.

I bring up my dreams in this doodle roundup because a good handful of the characters you will meet here are from my dreams or the dreams of others. In a way, making doodles and writing about them here is a conscious way or sorting thoughts I have throughout the week before. Are these then day dreams? I cannot say for certain. New doodle roundup, BOOYAH:

CHRISTINA

One time I met a girl named Christina on a chat roulette site. We enjoyed talking to each other and agreed to connect to the same site under a secret code so that we could speak with each other again. The time came for us to reconnect and we did. She was excited to chat again. Then our connection was interrupted. I never heard from her after that. I wonder what her life is like these days. Anyways, I stole this art style from artist ChewChewer on Twitter. Big fan of their work.

LAUREL

In keeping with the angels and demons theme from the first doodle roundup, Laurel is a demon with fangs and a forked tongue. After drawing her she reminded me of Laura from Twin Peaks. I just finished watching the third season, Twin Peaks: The Return recently and have always been fascinated and terrified of the hellish black lodge. Beside Laurel's devilish horns are Laura's words from the show, "I'll see you in 25 years." If I were to see Laurel in 25 years, I wonder what our encounter would look like.

MOODLE

Whilst perusing the wares of a used video game store I saw a deluxe copy of Final Fantasy VII REMAKE for the Sony PlayStation 4. I had wanted the game for some time and decided to buy it since it was at a good price. I love this game. It is every bit as great as I imagined it would be. So I drew a big, angry Moogle. I call him Moodle, because he's moody. He's pretty great.

CLIFFORD

My girlfriend's dad once said something that will haunt me forever. "Did you guys see that Jester over there? He's always showing up everywhere." Neither my girlfriend nor myself paid much attention to it at the time, but I've since found my brain returning to it again and again. A jester? Everywhere? What is his purpose? Why is he everywhere? The idea of the jester lingers with me. In my mind he has no beginning or end. Maybe he exists to herald someone, or something else. Who can say?

BLIB

Blib sort of reminds me of the fish from SpongeBob and one of the jocks from the body improvement club from Mob Psycho 100. He has big hair on his head and big sideburns on his face. I imagine his hair sort of acts like a helmet protecting him from physical trauma. His expression is that of shock. The idea of a physically strong person being so shocked by something that they are speechless is funny to me. Blib is strong, but he too can fear something. He's a nice dude anyways.

HIKARI

This is Hikari. I drew her after watching Hazel's YouTube video on weird and scary tokusatsu girls. She is based off the design for All About Mighty Lady whose titular protagonist has empty, dark eyes. Something about this design just spoke to me, you can see the influence from other bug-eyed tokusatsu designs like Ultraman. The difference here is Mighty Lady being more or less designed like an actual human makes her bug eyes rather uncanny. Highly recommend that YouTube video and all of Hazel's work for any fans of Japanese pop culture from before the 2000s.

IRIS

Iris is a rock creature. They have a small sprout growing out of their head and one of their eyes has been pierced by an arrow of some kind. This doesn't seem to get them down as they are making a kind expression whilst posing their hands. Their hands are showing how they've still got one good eye. Cute rock, hope their eye doesn't hurt too bad.

PRINCESS ORANGE

Last week I wrote about a character who has appeared in my dreams several times; Prince Orange. In that writing I said that sometimes he appears as a Princess. Well, here is Princess Orange. She appeared in my dream again earlier this week. I don't quite understand her role in my dreams, but she seems to have a degree of authority. Maybe she just knows what's going on. Sometimes people can seem like they have authority by projecting confidence. She is kind. I am certain I will see her in my dream again.

PETER

Peter is an alternative version of Princess Orange. I started drawing him after I drew Princess Orange in an attempt to see if I could better capture what I think she looks like. The result was someone entirely different. Peter sort of looks like John Lennon or Abracadaniel from Adventure Time. I like his floating halo and crown. I imagine him as being some sort of assistant to Princess Orange. Maybe they're coworkers in the dream world?

GORD

Last, we have the great Gord. I got the idea for Gord from Japanese daruma dolls. Originally I had wanted to make him just an eggplant shaped head with one of each facial feature, but I decided to add a strange, long arm to his side as well. Imagining how he might move with the arm to propel or pull himself forward is interesting to me. Perhaps he bounces a bit on his head like the set of three green bouncing heads in Spirited Away. Or maybe he slowly drags himself along the ground. He could be seen as scary, but I don't think he has any ill intent behind his single eye.

That's all for this week's doodle roundup. I've noticed that I take influence from various cartoons, movies, and TV that I watch when creating my doodles. Sometimes this is subconscious, other times it is a very conscious and intentional choice. Everything that we do is influenced by others, the actions they do, the way they look, and things they create. Until next time, remember: nothing is new under the sun and inspiration comes in many forms from all around us.

- Patrick Turner