"That odd whitening birch" (February 2020)
Feeling exhausted, so
Speedpaint (30 min) based on a dream I had back then. A few days before in the evening, around 9.30 pm, the sky was still kinda light but everything was mostly in shadows (it was summer so looong days) I was coming back from my daily walk and, a few blocks away from my house, I saw a tiny animal run up a garden peach (?*)'s tree trunk. The tree is on a grassy corner, and I clearly saw a little animal, slightly bigger than a regular mouse, run it up. I wasn't sure if what I saw was a Monito del Monte, a relatively common but extremely shy and nocturnal marsupial. So I walked up close to the trunk, but the animal had to have crawled up away at that point, not helped by the fact this tree's upper branches are in touch with the branches of a much taller tree. Which is also in contact with more trees.
So, I couldn't see the animal up close, but, that night I dreamed about finding a super strange animal (which was real in the dream, but doesn't exist IRL. This happens aloooot in my dreams), following said animal, and it sneaking away at a mass of birch trees that's near one of the schools I work at, much further away in my city. I noticed one of the birches was bigger than the rest (IRL there is a mature trees stratum, plus a saplings stratum below), and its more external leaves were beggining to turn pure white. Due to dream logic, I knew right away that there was a tunnel underneath it, and naturally I got in it and saw some fascinating stuff inside. I won't narrate the dream, as it was pretty long and the visuals were insane, but wanted to make two paintings: one of the alrge birch, and some day, another of the bizarre landscappery inside the tunnel. (2024 note: I started that, and never finished. Maybe one of these days?)
* non-commercial peach tree? those garden trees that make teeny fruit. There's a bunch of them in my city, as well as several types of small plums, pears and apples. All small garden variety trees!























