Nightmare (work for illustration class)

The assignment was to illustrate a childhood memory. I once had a nightmare when I was very young in which I awoke to a large shadowy figure looming over my bed. The thing had a face with no eyes and an abnormally large grin that seemed to glow in the moonlight. I also used to own a stuffed Sonic the Hedgehog doll. Unfortunately, I've lost it since. I miss him :(

Anyway, I decided to go a bit beyond my memory of the dream and depict the moment right before I awoke to this grinning terror. The reason I chose to paint this moment instead of the moment of encounter was because the fear I felt when I first saw it did not compare to what I felt after thinking more deeply about the dream. There was something stirring in my bedroom. The darkness had gathered and manifested into this horrible thing that hovered over me, mocking and threatening me. The thought that I was in danger of something as intangible as the dark in my very own bedroom, the safest place in the world, terrified me. I think just about anyone would be afraid of this notion. For years, whenever someone shut off the light of a room I would go into a panic.

I can't say what it was that made me have the dream. Maybe it was a primal fear of the dark. Maybe it was some scary movie I had just seen. Or a spooky story I had just heard. Whatever it was, this dream was powerful enough to have left a lasting impression.