There are nights when sleep just completely evades me. Often, it gets really annoying. There would be times when I turn off my phone in hopes that doing so would increase my chances to get rest. When I decided to recolor my walls, I chose a solid dark gray wallpaper because I felt like the darkness would help me get more comfortable sleep. Some nights, I get well rested. Most nights, I am restless.
Sometimes, I think my occasional allergy is a blessing in disguise. I would take antihistamine before going to bed, then get knocked out a few minutes later. The downside? I wake up incredibly groggy, sometimes even dizzy. Looking back, I feel bad for people who get a worse case of sleeplessness than I do.
Today's artwork touches on this seemingly impossible task of sleeping. Who would have thought that something as normal as sleeping can get so complicated?
I'm tired and restless and drowning, but just a word from you, and I find my rest.
This piece includes representations of nighttime, and frustration of not getting to sleep. It gets frustrating and sometimes physically manifesting when sleep adamantly eludes, but I decided to include a sliver of hope here, in the form of a single flower.
A poppy symbolizes rest, peace, sleep, and even death. The symbolism regarding sleep, apparently, comes from the sedative effects of opium extracted from poppies.
Insomnia is minted on NFT Showroom in two editions.
I honestly thought this would take me just a few hours to complete, but it was the opposite. While it's true I've been burying myself with work in the past few days, I still try to find time to draw. During those times, I would normally manage to complete an artwork. But it didn't happen in this piece.
Working on this took a while because I wanted my strokes to be smoother, and I wanted the values to be more contrasted. But that's quite honestly where my weakness falls, so I can imagine why this took long to complete. There were many adjustments done in between, and the breaks I had from working on this paved way for me to see areas I wanted to change.
Every time I thought I got the concept nailed, I wanted to add other things. Or adjust a particular part.
Sometimes I was led to believe that this piece was already done, but I would let it sit and come back to it, only to find that it wasn't anywhere near complete. I would find something to edit. Again.
I honestly think I like how it turned out. It can be different for other people, though. xD There would be times when I like a particular work I did, but others wouldn't see it the way I did. Hahaha.
How did your Spotify Wrapped 2020 go? Mine went as expected. My top artists were BLACKPINK, keshi, Oh Wonder, Mayday Parade, and Aimer. Top genre was Pop Punk, and I apparently discovered 537 new artists (no, I didn't realize they were that many)! I also got to spend 52,488 minutes on Spotify. Crazyyy.
