Annabel Lee: Edgar Allan Poe Series

 Last year, I brainstormed a bunch of ideas for the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I hashed through a few of them so I'd have a starting point if I got behind the 8-ball come October. Guess what? Behind the 8-ball!

Out of the three ideas I started, I chose the poem, "Annabel Lee". I felt that I would be able to work this into the "collection" with relative ease. I had been trying to keep my works within a certain color way and I had not yet done blue. The references in this poem to the sea inspired me that way.

While the year 2020 certainly lent itself to be the year of the "Red Death", I didn't have that one fleshed out enough to get it done for October. But I may work on it now that my Halloween projects are completed and I am not yet inspired for Christmas. 

Here's what I made:

If you recall, I do have a few parameters that I try to meet in each of these canvases in order to keep them somewhat cohesive. They all must display the title, they all must have a picture of Poe, they all must have a torn paper background (mostly). I try to keep it looking rather "vintage" but that's a loose rule.

The poem inspired certain elements; the tomb that opens into the sea, the moon, and the bride. 

I like how "the tomb" seems to be a doorway into a new realm and how the eye is drawn into it.

This canvas is complete enough for me to make a digital file of it. But I do intend to add more 3-D elements to it, specifically small seashells along the very bottom. Since those would not scan very well, I have left them off until I have a good digital rendering. 

This makes the 6th piece in the Poe collection. (I may be ready to do a set of notecards.) The others in this series can also be seen here on the blog in various October posts or search by label "Edgar Allan Poe". They are, in order of completion; The Raven, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, Morella, The Haunted Palace, and now, Annabel Lee.

Have a very Happy Halloween and Stay Safe! Today of all days is the time to Wear a Mask!

-Wy

Masquerading Pumpkins

 Just a little project that I had finished a while back and forgot to share!

This is a vignette box and I made it double sided so you can turn the box around and see a new view! Not much to tell about it except it's mostly just paper and an old sticker set I wanted to use.

Have a great weekend!

I'll have a post up tomorrow on Halloween to show you my Edgar Allan Poe canvas. I wish I had given myself some more time with Poe this year. But I may still do another canvas before the year is out because The Masque of the Red Death is calling my name for 2020.

-Wy

The Halloween Tree

 One of my favorite books is The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. I have always wanted to make one: a Halloween Tree or a Pumpkin Tree but it seemed too far out of my skill set. I have tried to draw them or make one on a 2-D canvas but they never quite satisfied my vision.

I have come very close this year. I won't bore you with a lot of details on this one. I took a stick and added wire and washi tape to make extra branches. I added lights. I added pumpkins and small paper cut details. The base is upcycled from something that was being trashed. The boys are paper dolls from Tim Holtz and the old man is a cut out rubber stamp image. That old man is Moundshroud carved by hand by Jackbear Stamps. This image is taken from the 1st edition of The Halloween Tree that was illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini.

I took photos with a piece of my artwork behind it as well as a simple "bare" background. (The original artwork is called "Moonshine".) Some details show up better against the dark, some better against the light. Enjoy the photos.

Remember what I told you? It lights up.

"...a mob of smiles shine down on thee from the gourds hung high on the Halloween Tree."

-Wy

Halloween Art Journal: Part 2

 As promised, it's part 2 of the Halloween Journal. Still black Dylusions square journal. Lot's of paint and collage.

Here we go...

Happy Haunting: I always try to sort my stash before I purchase anything new. This page came out of that sort. But it didn't stop me from buying new stuff this year. LOL.

Haunted Honeymoon:  Another page from the "stash". These scraps of paper from the Abandoned collection (Tim Holtz) were leftovers from the vignette boxes I was making. These little rectangles reminded me of vintage luggage or trunks. 

Fall Array:  I like to take my scraps of paper and stick them to a larger piece of paper then cut shapes out of them. These large shapes are done that way. I have stencils from way back, (the time before stencils were cool and people only used them on walls and furniture. True story.) After I created the "motherboard" paper (from the scraps), I traced the stencil and cut the shapes out.

BTW, I put all these large shapes on this spread because I didn't really like the background I had. I was experimenting with gold paint. While it worked well, I couldn't figure out what to do with it. So I covered it all up, mostly. (pro tip)

A Good Night's Work:  I had a starry background, old book paper, and a mop-up sheet of glossy cardstock that was silvery gray. I channeled those neon colors and made my bats really stand out. (Again with the ancient stencil!) 

Hope you're getting your Halloween on however you can this year!

Don't forget if you need any Halloween wall art, I've got original artwork/collage for sale in my Etsy shop. 

-Wy

Halloween Art Journal: Part 1

 In all fairness, I can't remember if I've shared some of these before or not, so this part contains pages that are older and not fresh in my mind. So that means...picture post!

This is a black square Dylusions journal that measures 8 X 8, I think. I've been working in this on and off for about 3 years now and I've pretty much dedicated it to be my Halloween themed journal. (Though some of the first pages I made are not, I was more or less experimenting with the substrate to see what would stick, literally.) I use paints and collage a lot in this journal. I can't say I'm a fan of this size or shape but I am determined to finish this journal in the Halloween theme. Not this year...oh no...I don't foresee any completed goals for this year.

Here's the first set of pages. 

Trick or Treat Abstract: I had scraps of paper in Halloween colors. I had leftover paint to splatter. That is all.

High School Lab:  This 2 page spread was meant just to preserve some of my favorite paper. The Laboratory collection from Tim Holtz a few years back was so hard to find and one of my very favorite Halloween paper collections he put out.

Nightshade Garden:  I had a collage sheet with imagery from Joggles.com. The background has a lot of interference paint (a paint that shifts color or shows better under certain lighting conditions). I really like the spiders in this spread. They remind me of the spider from The Corpse Bride.

 Green Halloween:  Another "using up the stash" page. 

Update on my Halloween projects: 

1. I am in the midst of doing my annual Edgar Allan Poe collage so I hope to share that by Halloween.

2. My inktober drawings may still happen but it's not looking good so I've put it on the back burner.

3. I completed another assemblage piece that I can't wait to share. (Yup, it lights up!)

4. I'm having a lot of fun using up some scraps in my art journal so I may have a Part 3 to this post as well!

Have a great week!

Wear your mask, social distance, wash your hands! Go VOTE and get a flu shot. (That's more of a reminder for me. *clears throat*)

-Wy

Ghosts in the Graveyard

 Here's a favorite project of mine this year! My original idea, the first idea, was to make Edgar Allan Poe's gravesite atop a stack of books. Poe may or may not be buried in this little graveyard but I kept the idea of using a stack of books. It's the closest I've gotten to doing another altered book in a long time so I'm counting it as a goal accomplished! 

Ghosts in the Graveyard:  A couple years ago I set up a party scape with a stack of books with titles that I thought reflected the Halloween mood. I had about 5 or 6 of them and I thought at the time of attaching them all together to make a permanent arrangement. Since I never got around to it, I decided to take from that stack and use a few for this display.

I won't take you through every little step but I'll try to point out a few things through the photos of the finished project. I relied heavily on items from Tim Holtz's Halloween lines of Ideaology. These are a variety of items some from my stash; some I bought brand new this year. My vision for the graveyard really took off when I realized the Metal Fence fit "just so" on the top book I was using for my base.

This photo gives a good depiction of the graveyard. I covered the book with a sheet of  paper from Tim Holtz's Abandoned stash. (So happy that I finally got my hands on this paper stash! It is mesmerizing how much pattern and color is in it. Truly a sheet for any project.) Those rocks are some kind of foam bead that I had in my stash and never used. Its a good filler when you're attaching large items with texture paste as it fills in the gaps. I just spread on the texture paste and lightly pressed these into it. Mummy cloth adds a bit of light fog around the edges and the brush bottle trees in the back were sprayed with several different shades of ink to fit my color palette. While I used some Evergreen Bough, Shaded Lilac, and Gathered Twigs (Distress stain), my main color was Whale Watch Blue from Lindy's. This cold blue-gray color was exactly what I wanted to reflect a foggy chilly Halloween night. I sprayed the texture paste and foam beads with this color and the mummy cloth to match.

I added details to the tombstones in the front. I placed a creepy eye on one and set a skull beside the other. I added small ruby rhinestones into the skulls eyes, the only deviation from my washed out color palette. If you look closely at the gravestones in the back row, just before the trees, they may seem familiar. I used old chess pieces. I took the black ones and gave them a little coat of gray paint then added little splotches of black to make them seem old and weathered. I colored a pearl with purple alcohol ink to set atop the rook to resemble a gazing ball.

I added the ghosts after staring at it awhile and deciding I wanted a vertical element. It was feeling very "horizontal"...your eye tracked left and right but not up and down. The ghosts helped with that and I LOVE these ghosts. They remind me of the ones in The Nightmare Before Christmas that fly over during the Pumpkin Song.

The advantage of using a stack of books is that books can be carved out. So I carved out the bottom book just enough to fit in the smallest of vignette boxes. Now because no one was going to be opening this book, I could make the cuts sloppy and just hide the edge with paper. The zombie hand (that I had to buy as it came in the pack with the tombstones) made a perfect drawer pull. (Though I admit that at a distance, this zombie hand looks like it's giving me the finger!) The items in the drawer are all that remains of the Edgar Allan Poe idea. I thought, "if I went through a secret drawer in Poe's office, what might I find?" None of these items are glued down so they can be removed from the drawer and examined. I wonder what the skeleton key unlocks?

So what's the best part about this project? It lights up!

I hid a string of purple tiny lights around the perimeter of the graveyard. That was the point of the mummy cloth, really, to hide the lights. While the cloth didn't diffuse the lights as much as I would have liked, it looks way better in person that it does in these photos. I love how the ghosts practically disappear in the darkness.

 Let's talk about those lights for a minute. When I saw that these colored lights were available, I immediately bought 2 sets. I had not invested in the regular tiny lights because I thought they'd be hard to incorporate into vignette boxes...you'd have to drill a hole in the back to put the wire through...I'm not that handy. But knowing that there was no "back" to this project...no walls so to speak; it would be relatively easy to rig the string of lights. The battery pack sits in it's own little paper box that is attached to the top book as shown. I used a whole strand of lights and taped it down with some washi tape that was reinforced with collage medium. That held the wire down so that I could then cover them with the stained mummy cloth and glue the cloth down around the lights to also keep them in place. I think I now want to add lights to everything!

I have added this scene to my newly created "Halloween nook" in my craft space and it will stay up year round along with many of my other altered projects. 

Thanks for hanging with me to the end!

Stay safe out there! Wear your mask, wash your hands, social distance! Yes, it's important.

-Wy