Story behind the Dreamcatcher

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What is a Dreamcatcher?

I thought dreamcatcher is an object that will catch our bad dreams or nightmares like that, but actually it is not related to our dreams. Instead in olden days they used it to catch harm coming from insects or evil eye kind of thing that might be in air these catcher will holds whatever comes.

DREAMCATCHER is a handmade willow hoop, in which a net or web is woven to it and it also includes sacred items such as feathers and beads.



Where it was originated?

It originated in ANISHINAABE (refers to "the good humans") are group of  culturally related indigenous people resident in North America. They speak in a language called ANISHINAABEMOWIN or ANISHINAABE LANGUAGES. In this OJIBWE tradition is also included which was originating long ago in the Great Lakes region.

In their culture Dreamcatcher is a "Spider web charm", in their language ASUBAKACIN means net like, white earth band, BWAAJIGE NGWAAGAN  means dream snare and ASABIKESHIINH means the inanimate form of the word for "spider" or "little net maker".

Who originated this Dreamcatcher?

In Ojibwe origin these Dreamcatcher(spider web charm) originated form spider women known as ASIBIKAASHI who takes care of the children's and the people of a particular region. 

Things used for the Dreamcatcher

As the Ojibwe nation spread to the corners of North America it was difficult for ASIBIKAASHI to reach all the children's. So the mothers and grandmothers weave webs for the children using Willow hoop and sinew or cordage made from plants.

Willow hoop

Cordage from plants
         

Sinew thread


How they used this Dreamcatcher?

They used it as Apotropaic means a type of magic intended to turn away harm or evil influences, deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye. Apotropaic observance may also be practiced in several different gestures or of different forms.
These Dreamcatchers are provided as protective charms for infants, they will hung the spider webs on the hoop of the cradle board.
In olden days they used nettle fiber for netting.

Nettle fiber

They used two spider web to hung on the hoop to catch the harm that comes in contact.

Native American cradle board



How it came into the rest of the world?

Dreamcatchers are continued to be used in traditional manner in their communities and cultures of origin. This was adopted into the Pan-Indian movement (is an act of promoting unity among Native Americans) of 1960s and 1970s  as a symbol of identification with Native American culture or First Nations culture. 
The name "Dreamcatcher" was published in mainstream, non native media in the 1970s and widely know as "Native crafts item" by 1980s and in 1990s it was one of the most popular and marketable ones. Now in the New age they are seeing it as a loving tradition or as a symbol of native unity.

So these are some facts about Dreamcatcher.

Wandering news about Dreamcatcher,

There is world record happened on this Dreamcatcher. The Worlds Largest Dreamcatcher was created at Afterhills Music and Arts festival in Iasi, Romania.
Largest Dreamcatcher has 9.92m (32ft 6.74in) diameter, its outer circle has 45cm(17.7in) thickness and weighs 460kg(1014.12lbs). This Dreamcatcher was made by willow branches for outer circle and jute (thread made of vegetable fiber) for internal spider web pattern. Totally 28 local artist and volunteers worked in shifts on the structure and weaving the willow wood.

Largest Dreamcatcher

During Afterhills Music and Arts festival in the year 2017 this World's largest Dreamcatcher was one of the art installation on the display.
At that time of the festival the theme was dreamers, which is why the organizers chose the Dreamcatcher as their symbol, they attempted this Guinness World Record title to highlight the Diversity of their festival.
At the end of the festival this Dreamcatcher was given to the local community.

How I got to know about Dreamcatcher?

From the beginning I too don't know about this Dreamcatcher. I like to watch movies in Tamil, English, Hindi, Telugu and popular movies of any other languages too. So by watching movies  I started noticing this Dreamcatcher. From there I started  collecting the picture of Dreamcatcher and now I started drawing my imaginary Dreamcatcher in the paper. First time I noticed Dreamcatcher from my favorite movie "Twilight" series in the season "The twilight Saga: Newmoon". 

Scene from the movie The Twilight Saga: Newmoon"

If you like watching any romantic movies then I will suggest  to add Twilight series on your list.

My interests for Dreamcatcher,

After watching that movie I started liking dreamcatcher a lot and I always think about how to draw Dreamcatcher on my own, so I started searching for the simple Dreamcatcher images that I can try. So I tried a dreamcatcher using an inspirational image.
 
                       


      

  If you like Dreamcatcher,



You can try this simple dreamcatcher idea with following simple steps 

1. All you need is a paper and pencil ready and you need to start it with circle. If u have circle ruler then its awesome, if you don't have then you can try with any other circular objects around you. Here I started with a round shaped bowl to form one circle and the other I drew with hand and  then I started drawing flowers from one corner. After this go with the strings and the feathers with the beads. First I did this with pencil once completed I went with micron to avoid mistakes. (so to avoid mistakes give a trial with pencil and then go for pen or sketch whichever you like).


2. Once I completed the outline I started the next step from flowers,


here I used Blue, Magenta, Green, Orange, Purple and Brown. I just gave colored lines to the flowers, you can also fill it completely with colors or just you can do it with Micron based on how you like. I like seeing colors in those Microns pen works.

3. Next step is to highlight the color for this I used black color sketch you can identify that in my drawing,


using dark outline will give special look to the colors.

4. Now its time for the circles imagine a thread circling around the ring. Here I gave little dark lines on the both of the circle, then started with lines. For every 10 or 12 lines make a small hump on both the sides. For this I used Micron black pen.



5. Now go for feathers start with micron lines imagine a real feather. Once I did the micron lines then I used a black color for matte finishing to the feathers, after this give one more outline to the feathers and strings, give beads a dark shade leaving some space at the center to give shining look.



for the micron lines I used .25mm line pen and for the outline and beads I used .45mm line pen. Again I used black color pencil to give good finishing. 

That's it Your dream catcher is all done, if You like colors you can use or else go with black microns for whole image.



Dreamcatcher is very easy and simple do try and share how much you liked or give me any feedback for me to improve myself I will learn for sure.

Thank you.

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