As we begin this new year, one of the things I’d like to do from time to time is acknowledge more fully the various players in the Journal newsroom who contribute to making our newspaper all it can be. And I’d also like to continue with my goal of pulling back the curtain on how things happen. Ideally, I can do both at the same time.
A case in point:
We ran a very thought-provoking drawing in Tuesday’s paper in our Living section to accompany a story on dreams. The drawing is in the file, but I’ve also attached it.
It’s a pretty wild—and effective—collection of images. I find the creative process very interesting, and you wonder where people come up with ideas. So I asked the artist, Jeremy Boyd, about his inspirations. Here’s his response:
Some drawings for the illustration came from small random sketches scattered throughout some of my sketchbooks. I have over 30 full sketchbooks going back to 1997 so I had plenty of images to choose from. The tentacle in the coffee mug and the wind up car are little images that have popped up in my sketchbooks repeatedly over the years. The chicken leg, the running guy and the two headed person/creature were also little doodles from my sketchbooks. The rest of the ideas for images all came from a book on dream interpretation that was given to me years ago by an old friend who was into that sort of thing. I think she gave it to me with the intention of borrowing it on a long term basis. I randomly turned to a page in the book, put my finger on a random spot on the page and whatever subject it landed on, I did a quick drawing of. The axe, scissors, flies, candle, and umbrella all came from the book. I did several other drawings, these just all fit together better compositionally. With the subject of the story being dreams, I felt like I could draw just about anything and it would work. The more open to interpretation I could leave it, the better the illustration would fit the story.
My favorite is the tentacle in the coffee mug. That’s what 6:30 a.m. feels like every day. Happy Friday and have a good weekend.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from 
Cool, cool, cool. One of your best entries yet!
I agree with you on the tentacled coffee cup. I always said I like my coffee strong enough to reach out of the cup and slap me awake - now I have a good visualization of that!
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