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.

Red Carpet Studios Challenge #81: The Haunted Mansion

Whoooohoooo! It's time for my favorite theme for cardmaking: HALLOWEEN!!! At Red Carpet Studios the movie is The Haunted Mansion! I'll be on my way to see the "real" Haunted Mansion in a few weeks for my vacation. (Super excited! It's my first trip to Disney World!)

So make up a spooky scrapbook page, or a card, or a tag, or anything papercraft related and share it over on the challenge blog and you might win a little something!!!

When I pulled out my Halloween stash, I was a bit overwhelmed. I had an overflowing assortment of things from years past. So I made a slew of cards made up of bits and pieces. I'll share a bunch here but you can also find other projects and ideas in previous posts and in upcoming posts, too!

Tim Holtz Halloween: The stamps on this card are from Stamper's Anonymous and Tim Holtz. These are the new Halloween stamps that came out this year. These are the mini size. (Technically, these are my sisters stamps so THANKS, SIS!) I like the look of the wood carving these images provide as I am a fan of hand-carved stamps. This card front was actually inspired by an art journal page that I did. I was just playing around with some spray inks and testing out these new stamps. The page turned out so nice, I decided to recreate it on a card front! It's a spray ink background on watercolor paper and then it's trimmed down to stick onto the front of a 5.5 X 6 inch card. (I used Dylusions spray ink, black archival ink pad for stamping, a star stencil, a silver metallic pen, and a torn paper scrap for the moon)

Vintage Halloween:  My older brother collects old Halloween postcards. (You see the images of these postcards reproduced a lot. He collects the authentic originals and has amassed quite a collection over 40 years!) I always think of him when I use these vintage images. You can turn old photos into creepy portraits with just a few stamps or stickers. All I added to the "Ghoulfriends" was the black masks and the couple's portrait just needed a witches hat and a few bats. The sentiment reads, "Under my spell". The purple card just embraced the "trick or treating" aspect of Halloween.

Owloween:  Owls are on trend so naturally I wanted to use up some felt owls I had lying around for a year or so. The background of this card is what is really unique. I like to make "motherboards" out of scrap paper that I save from other projects. A motherboard is just a 8 1/2 X 11" sheet of sticker paper with the scraps stuck onto it. I don't make any patterns I just want to cover all the adhesive. I prefer to tear my paper and have minimal overlapping to maximize coverage. If I'm going to make cards, I then cut the mother board into four equal parts (5.5 X 4.25 rectangles or 1/4 of a sheet). The smaller sections become my background. The many "lines" of paper suggested this layout to me. I stamped the tree "branch" and filled in what the stamp didn't have. (the stamp is from Seaside Stamps and is actually a whole tree just turned on its side. But it wasn't long enough to cover the length of the card so I added more trunk on the right.) The colors suggest Halloween but it doesn't have to be. (The scrap paper used on this mother board all came from my Book of Fire Altered Book project.)

Spooktacular Scrap Card:  This card was again made from scraps of other projects. The stripes of pumpkins was a patterned cardstock scrap, the word was from stickers I had to use up and so were the bats. The stars were drawn in with a White Uniball pen on the blue card. The moon is a stamping mask I used on an ATC I was working on last week. I needed to mask off a circle on the card so I could ink it a variety of blue colors. The circle, of course, took on all these blues and so I made it my blue moon on this card. This card literally took 10 minutes but it looks great!

Scaredy Cat:  Did I spell that right? I have no idea but this little card demonstrates how an everyday stamp image can be turned into a Halloween image. This cute little digi-stamp is from Bugaboo Stamps. The cat might be playing or stalking a mouse but on a Halloween card, he might be hiding from something spooky! Again, the background was a mother board from scrap paper used in different Halloween projects. I just added the words to cement in the Halloween theme. The mother board backgrounds really are so busy that all you need to add is a focal image and a sentiment then it's finished. Nice.

Hope you found some ideas for your Halloween cards whether they're creepy, fun, whimsical, or vintage. Whatever you make, be sure to share over at Red Carpet Studios so I can see your designs and give your blog a look see!
--Wy
"The stars they turn, the candles burn
and the mouse-leaves scurry on the cold wind bourne,
and a mob of smiles shine down on thee
from the gourds hung high on the Halloween Tree."
       --Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

Halloween's Coming!

My favorite holiday of all is Halloween. (Followed by Christmas and Independence Day) I love the Autumn Season, my birthday is in there, and the leaves are beautiful in the Adirondacks. I like the fact that the daylight gets less and there's more darkness to the world. More time to light my candles and enjoy the flickering light. It's an excuse to read Edgar Allan Poe and watch my favorite movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, VanHelsing, and any Godzilla flick.

 

More than any other, though, it's that time of year when I break out Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree for a wonderful read. I first read it only two years ago when I found a copy of it in a book sale. It was a hardcover book with wonderful black and white line drawings. I had heard of it, never read it. But it was only a buck and I figured I would alter it...you know, rip out some pages here and there, draw, paint, stamp, and ink over the rest to design a Halloween inspired artwork. But as with many of the books I buy with plans to alter, I sometimes end up reading a bit of them. Most times, they never draw me in and I find it easier to rip out pages. But this time was different. This time, the words dripped off the page and the poem of the Tree made my heart flutter.

"The stars they turn, the candles burn

and the mouse-leaves scurry on the cold wind bourne,

and a mob of smiles shine down on thee

from the gourds hung high on the Halloween Tree."

 

It was a delightful tale that summoned all the spirit of Halloween, all it's mystery and indefinable something. It smelled of caramel apples and candy corn. It tasted like sugary cupcakes that Mom always baked with the little Halloween picks in them; chocolate with chocolate buttercream. It was everything of youth. Like The Night Before Christmas evokes that vision of Christmas Eve, so this tale made Halloween Night come alive. And the guide through the tale, the teacher of things and keeper of souls was Moundshroud; Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud. A wizard, a reaper, an angel of death. He keeps the history of Halloween wrapped up in his old house and the souls of the dead light his tree.

 

There was no way I was going to rip up this book!

 

I'm completely enamoured with the tale. It's visions are vast and unique. I discovered after reading it that the copy I had purchased was a First Edition from 1972. The illustrations within it were done by Joseph Mugnaini in pen and ink. So wonderfully detailed...so amazing to look at. I simply had to have an image to use. Jackbear Stamps came through for me and carved me a portion of one of the illustrations in the book; the one of Moundshroud. I love it.

 

 

Stamped in Jet Black Stazon onto glossy white cardstock, I tried various ways of adding color. I finally settled on a combination of Distress Markers (Dusty Concord and Spiced Marmalade), and Derwent Inktense Pencils (Apple Green and Sun Yellow). I then added a touch of glitter pen (Sakura) to his eyes and to highlight the stripes of the swirling star behind him. Moundshroud remains in black and white. It's ATC sized but the actual stamp is a touch larger. This image is a portion of the entire image that appears in the book.

 

I hand carved this second image. It is the face that appears on Chapter One. Each chapter in the book has a mask and I liked the graphic aspect of this one.

 

What will I do with it? That image of Moundshroud? I will treasure it.

 

Wy

"A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders."

---Edward Plunkett