Throwback Thursday: October 23, 2014

You can find the original post HERE.

How could I not share a Poe related project for Halloween?!

In that old post, I couldn't decide if I liked the finished piece or not. I have decided that I like it overall but if given the chance I'd fix a few things. So armed with another story of Poe's, I did just that. I chose the story: The Black Cat.

 Poe's The Black Cat:  This is an 8 X 10 pre-primed canvas. From my Raven canvas, I decided that I liked the look of the vintage ephemera as well as the limited color palette. Poe's stories are literary classics so I stuck with a classic look. What I didn't like (mostly) about the Raven canvas, was the haphazard chaos of the embellishments; not the buttons, pearls, and rhinstones themselves but their placement. It lacked a certain "site-line" or symmetry for me. So in this canvas, I wanted to contain these things in a diagonal site-line...it ends up along the black mesh.

My color palette of purple, black, and cream was just what I was looking for to define a classic style with a touch of mystery. I loved the black flowers from the first canvas so repeated them here. I used vintage buttons in pearl to add a few light colors.

How could I do a canvas on this short story without adding a cat? The cat image is a stamp from Lost Coast Designs. (Check them out if you like rubber stamping. They even have a stamp of Poe!)  I stamped it in black then cut it out and matted it with some purple cardstock to make it stand out a bit.
I also loved the large lettering on the first canvas and wanted to do the same for this. The stenciled letters that I originally used, however, only came with a single letter per alphabet. So I couldn't spell "black cat" because it had 2 "c"s and I couldn't even spell "cat" because I had used the "a" in "raven". So I switched to another alphabet I had and just used alcohol ink to stain it purple. I wasn't sure the ink would stick to the plastic but lo and behold, it worked!

It turned out so well that I decided to frame it! I had so much fun with this that I may try to get another Poe canvas done before Halloween. If it works out, you'll see it first here!

-Wy
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."  --Edgar Allan Poe