The Pumpkin Tree Canvas

At Halloween, I love to read Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, and The Halloween Tree.  The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury is a marvelous story about several boys in a small town who discover the roots of Halloween traditions while trying to save their friend, Pip. They are guided on their journey by the mysterious Moundshroud.

I'll try not to elaborate too much except to say that this book has wonderful words, fascinating descriptions that bring the feel of Halloween to life. It is a book to be savored...every word drips.

The title comes from a large tree from which hang a variety of carved pumpkins. That image...that tree haunts me. I attempt something every Halloween to live up to it's description. I always fall short. I think I have again this year, but I'm getting closer.

Here's my canvas in homage to this great book.

The Pumpkin Tree:  My original idea was to just paint the whole thing. But I was concerned about layering my orange over a dark background. I could have just colored around the placement of pumpkins but I discovered that I don't much like that. (Art journals are good for something besides stress relief. Having painted around a few things on my pages in the Inspiration Journal, I wasn't to excited to do it on this canvas.) So I switched gears to use torn paper. It's pretty much my trademark, so to speak.

I cut out some loose "pumpkin" shapes from scrapbook paper. This was just to play with placement and figure out how many pumpkins and what sizes they needed to be. Once I figured that out, I sketched onto the canvas the limbs and pumpkins so I knew where the background had to be focused. I used Golden fluid acrylic for the background. (colors: Payne's Gray, Cobalt Turquoise, a bit of purple at the bottom, I forget which one.) I started with a brush but quickly just resorted to using my fingers. I'm rather partial to the blending I get this way.

I intended to use patterned paper for the pumpkins and embellish them with paint but I had an inspiration to use book text. I have two books that I use mainly for ripping out pages to collage. One is an old children's dictionary (with cool illustrations) and the other is a geographical dictionary. (When I bought this book, years ago, I had never heard of this kind of dictionary. It's a listing of every place on the planet...seriously...even my small rural area is listed here.) The geographical dictionary was easier to access so I ripped random pages from that. I colored them with various spray inks in my collection and tried to make each page a slightly different shade. Inspiration struck again when I ripped the pages in to strips to cover my paper templates rather than cut a single pumpkin from a single sheet of text. This gave me the "stripes" you often see in pumpkins as well as a variance of color.
What I didn't realize at the time, was that some of the pages I ripped out were well suited to my project. I ripped out the page with the "Transylvania" listing, as well as the "J" page that includes all locations that start out with "jack". I tried to make sure that these words were evident, if one took the time to look. (I also ripped out a page that had "Potsdam" on it. Potsdam, Germany, of course was the reference but still, the name is there on one of the pumpkins.)

I tore out facial features from another book page that I sprayed with yellows. The tree is just scrapbook paper which I outlined with PITT pens. I added a few detail swipes here and there to make the limbs seem more "together". Everything was collaged down with ModPodge and I detailed the pumpkins with Liquid Pearls (Ranger) and Stickles (Ranger). As a finishing touch, I outlined each pumpkin with gelato (Faber Castell) and blended it in. It gives each pumpkin a bit of a glow.

I like the way it turned out  though it is not what I have envisioned for the Halloween Tree. But once I got rolling with it, inspiration just led me to this. I truly love these pumpkins and will remember this technique for future projects.

Hang in there for more Halloween fun at my blog this month! New posts every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday for the month of October. See ya soon!
-Wy
"Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud. Does it sound for you, boys?"  --Moundshroud, The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury.