Illustration XXVIII: Late Night Visions & Racing Thoughts

⬅  Check the illustration post before this, Illustration - XXVII

The Skeptic and The Preacher

'But I don't believe you,' said the old lady to the preacher on the street.

Everyone has their own ways of preaching. Maybe this is my way of preaching their story. :P

Caught this scene outside the station last week—a street preacher with his weathered Bible, gesturing dramatically to a small crowd of mostly indifferent passersby. But there was this old woman who stopped, looked him dead in the eyes, and delivered that line with such perfect timing it felt like watching theater.

It got me thinking about conviction—how some people can be so absolutely certain they've got it all figured out, while others maintain that healthy skepticism even after decades of living. Which one am I? Probably somewhere in the middle, making uncertain art with confidence.

Adobe apps have introduced a new time-lapse feature, which I used to capture the creation process for this piece. I wanted to capture not just the figures but that peculiar urban energy that surrounds these sidewalk theological debates—the mixture of earnestness and cynicism, performance and authenticity.

Self-Consuming Creation

Creativity doesn't come from outside.

This one emerged during one of those nights when sleep feels like a distant memory and the brain starts feeding on itself. The image shows a face consuming something emerging from the person's head—a visual representation of how creativity often feels like a cannibalistic process, consuming parts of ourselves to make something new.

The technical challenge was creating that visceral texture without making it so grotesque it became unreadable. I wanted that balance between beautiful and disturbing that makes viewers linger just long enough to feel slightly uncomfortable.

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The 3:20 AM Window View

An image of what I could see outside my window at 3:20 AM. I hate that I have normalized staying up so late.

The blue-purple light washing over everything gives nocturnal scenes that dreamlike quality I'm obsessed with lately. There's something about the world at that hour—emptied of most human presence but still bearing our marks—that feels like glimpsing reality from slightly outside it.

Created this using a combination of quick sketches done directly at the window (my neighbors probably think I'm surveilling them at this point) and digital color work done afterward. Wanted to capture that particular quality of artificial light that makes everything feel simultaneously hyperreal and completely artificial.

The composition intentionally includes the window frame—that boundary between inside and outside, observer and observed, that seems especially significant during those liminal hours when most people are unconscious.

Neural Constellations

This miscellaneous illustration of brain cells floating in space was part of a series exploring the parallels between neural networks and cosmic structures. There's something about the visual similarity between neurons and galaxies that feels significant—like maybe the pattern of connection is the fundamental truth at every scale of existence.

Created during one of those sleep-deprived states where the mind makes connections it wouldn't during normal waking hours. Used a combination of authentic neuroanatomy references and astronomical imagery, then let the digital brushwork find the middle ground between them.

The color palette intentionally leans into that cosmic blue-purple range that seems to appear in both deep space photography and neural imaging. Not subtle symbolism (when am I ever subtle?), but sometimes the obvious connections are the ones worth examining.

Racing Through Existence

Image of people running, buses flying, and laptops flying all racing in the same direction, running through clouds.

Loose thoughts - 'running at the speed of life and can't slow down'. I don't remember where I heard it, but I'm feeling it now.

This piece emerged from that perpetual feeling of being slightly behind schedule for everything—work, creativity, relationships, existence itself. There's something darkly comedic about our collective rushing that I wanted to capture—how we're all frantically racing toward some undefined finish line.

The technical approach involved creating that sense of forward momentum while maintaining the dreamlike quality that comes from objects behaving contrary to physics (flying buses and laptops). Used motion blur selectively to emphasize speed while keeping certain elements in sharp focus—that sensation of hyper-awareness amid chaos that characterizes modern life.

I genuinely can't remember where I heard that line about "running at the speed of life," but it's been echoing in my head for weeks. Maybe it came from a song, maybe a podcast playing in the background while I worked, maybe I dreamed it. Does it matter? It's lodged in my consciousness now, demanding visual expression.

The Second Repetition

Loose thoughts - 'running at the speed of life and can't slow down'. I don't remember where I heard it, but I'm feeling it now.

 

Not a mistake—I intentionally repeated this section because that's how thoughts work during insomnia, isn't it? The same ideas circling back, slightly altered, demanding attention again. The repetition itself becomes part of the experience, the mental loop we can't quite break free from.

Night Thoughts

These pieces weren't created as a cohesive series, but in arranging them for this post, I see the thread connecting them—that particular mental state that emerges in the early hours when the sensible part of your brain has gone offline but the creative part refuses to shut down.

There's a freedom in that space—when expectations sleep while imagination remains stubbornly awake. Maybe that's why I keep returning to these late hours despite knowing better. Maybe the exhaustion is worth the clarity. Or maybe I'm just justifying terrible sleep habits through art. Either way, these images exist now, extracted from that liminal space between productivity and unconsciousness.

Until next time, fellow night owls and sleep-deprived dreamers.

— Your friendly neighborhood insomniac illustratorAdobe apps have introduced a new time-lapse feature. 

Check out the next illustration Blogpost,  Illustration: XXIX  ➡