Goya’s Sueños are a series of drawings that Goya created as a kind of practice run before they were turned into engravings. Engraving involves marking onto paper a drawing that has first been scratched into a metal plate.

The image is marked onto the metal plate with a cutting or scratching implement. The scratches made using the tool are filled with ink and the iron plate is then placed on top of paper. The ink remains on the paper and the drawing appears. It is a great deal of fun, and the effect is very interesting. Goya often created engravings, and these drawings you are seeing now are his preparations for some of them.

In these drawings, Goya sketches as if he were asleep, or as if these were images that came to him in his sleep. But in reality, this is the trick he used to draw things that were not permitted. He said that they were things he saw when he was sleeping, which were not real, and that is why he was allowed to continue. That is why he drew animals doing typically human things. What was Goya trying to say with these drawings? Can you guess?