Sokka's Dream

Hello there everyone ^_^

I hope that you're all doing well! All righty then! What do I have here, you ask? Well, here I have my newest deviation, which, like the last painting, is also a piece dedicated to the Avatar: The Last Airbender television series.

I completed the sketch a few weeks ago as seen here:



This, of course is the final painted image, which was quite enjoyable to do, for the most part.

So where to begin in terms of explaining this one? As stated in the title, this is my rendition of the character Sokka having a pretty wacky dream. Front and centered, Sokka of course is the VERY happy young man who is lucky to have his two love interests, Suki and Princess Yue on each arm; ready to fight in order to keep him!! This was partially inspired by one of the animated shorts on one of the DVD box set of the series, in which the girls *did* clash briefly over him!

In real time of course, this could not have happened given the final fate of Princess Yue.... Instead, it seemed that Sokka and Suki were the ones to eventually come together, but there's also no doubt that Princess Yue meant something to Sokka and perhaps in his dreams, he does sometimes consider what could have been.....

Overall though, despite the seriousness of what did ultimately happen in regards to Princess Yue, I mainly wanted this image to be zany and wacky, which is also why I included dream elements that Sokka himself mentioned in the series, like "food eating people" (as seen by the apple with teeth and utensils) and how Momo, the rabbit monkey that accompanied the group during their travels, would say "unkind things" in his dreams. When trying to interpret this comment, for some reason I found humor in the thought that perhaps Momo had quite the potty mouth within this dream. I suppose that more or less speaks for itself though.

Moving on, since Sokka fancies himself quite the man with the two ladies at his side, I thought I'd try to emphasize that by adding a crown on his head, while of course giving him an even bigger head than the two other figures (nevermind that they're chibis to begin with....).

I originally intended to have him wearing a generic crown, but then I thought I'd use the firelord crown or emblem to add some familarity within the image instead. Furthermore, since the dream is wacky already, I thought it would also be a sight to see an angry Zuko, as a fireball (or possibly a comet?) reacting to his eventual friend suddenly wearing the crown that should be his!

As for why Zuko is a fireball/comet, at first I thought about drawing him in flames, to emphasize his anger over the situation, but also given the whole topic of comets within the show, I thought it would be funny to draw him as some strangely shaped fireball comet; since the concept of comets was most likely on Sokka's mind quite a bit throughout the series. They do say that you dream about things that you ponder over sometimes, after all.

Also since there was often a running gag about a cabbage merchant within the Avatar series, I thought that I'd continue with this crazy dream landscape, and add a giant cabbage that Sokka climbed and claimed like a mountain; hence the little flag planted at the top.

And lastly, since (if I recall correctly) it appeared as if Sokka eventually lost his "space sword;" the one in which he forges himself, I figured that that too would be something that would be on his mind, and so in his dreams, the fabled blade has come back to haunt him.....

Given that the episode in which he learned to wield a sword was one that centered around his character, I also opted to put him in the outfit that he wore then too. I have to admit that believed that he looked the best in this particular outfit, which could further emphasize Sokka's mindset of being "the man" in this dream.

As a final touch, I had to include the rose that Sokka had in his mouth while waiting for Suki in his tent in one episode. It was a humorous moment, that didn't go as planned but then too, at least for a second, I'm sure he felt like quite the casanova! ^_^

Of course its worth noting that I used photoshop ONLY for the text and for minor touch ups throughtout the painting. And though its obvious that I was hoping to draw/paint the image within a cloud-like bubble to show that this is a dream, I thought it would be nice to include a pattern around it to make up for a lack of background. I have to admit though, that that pattern took MUCH longer to paint than I had anticpated, but what can you do?

As always this piece was done using opague water color paints. Thanks for looking everyone!

Love,
yamigirl21