I know, don't faint, I'm still alive. :-) I have (obviously) lost the time and/or drive to keep this blog updated...oops. I still haven't even posted any other pictures of the other parts of our house that are complete (or nearly so...most rooms need just a little more tweaking that I haven't quite gotten to yet). In the meantime, I managed to take some pictures of Halloween this year - now that Halloween is over I guess I'd better get these posted!
I adore these clever plates I found at HobbyLobby!
The paintings are by yours truly, painted for the express purpose of adorning my walls during the month of October. It was great fun!
Most of them were drawn using the blind contour process, in which I just looked at the photograph and never (or hardly ever) at the canvas. As you can see, it renders a looser, more playful version of reality than if I had been looking back and forth to carefully record the likeness with exactness.
I love drawing the blind contour way = very therapeutic and relaxing, and it's always fun to see how skewed the drawings turn out!
After doing the initial charcoal drawing on canvas, I then go back and paint within the drawn lines, leaving some of the orangey-red color peeking through as much as possible.
Being a perfectionist, it's a good exercise for me to loosen up...although I must admit that sometimes the skewed proportions of these animals make me cringe, because it makes it look like I just don't know how to draw very well. I've actually done a large body of work recently using the blind contour technique with flowers as the subject matter, which I truly enjoy because when things end up distorted it takes on a very interesting abstract effect rather than just looking like an inaccurate drawing. I haven't photographed them yet, they're all still piled in my studio along with a bunch of other paintings I'm in the middle of.
The snake is the one painting I didn't draw using blind countour - I really wanted the sinewy curves of the snake to make sense so I looked back and forth on this one.
The toad is my favorite...it was so fun to draw and then paint all of his bumpy warts! I think I'll name him Torrence. Torrence the Toad.
The complimentary colors of green and red play together very strikingly, yes?
Not much new here from previous years...
...except the candy-filled chemistry vials.
This year was the year of faux painting my faux pumpkins. The cinderella pumpkin on the dining table was a very ugly, cheap foam thing that underwent many layers of paint and glaze to emerge looking much more believable.
This giant orange pumpkin is a ceramic one I found at Home Goods and couldn't walk away from (isn't it awesome?!) and I'm still debating whether or not to add any subtle glazing to give it a bit more depth.
All the black and white ones were cheap plastic or foam things that I painted and glazed.
Because every table needs a spiky orange and white bouquet at Halloween time. :-)
Most of these plates are ones I've had for years, but the EEEEK thing is new!
I found a bunch of letters at various times from various stores and painted them all.
The big black carved one is my favorite.
Ah, Hazel, my little Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. I always wait to make her costume because she always changes her mind at the last minute. For months she wanted to be BB-8 from Star Wars, but when Nightmare Before Christmas came out on Netflix she had a change of heart about 2 weeks before the big day. I was grateful for the change, because despite the handstitching on the fabric scraps this costume was easier than a 3-D version of a spherical bot!
Hyrum couldn't decide whether or not to go trick-or-treating one last time before he's too old, so at the last minute (like 15 minutes before we were leaving) he said he wanted to be a bush. So here he is, little red bird perched on a branch and all. Hooray for clear tape and a ditch full of scrubby branches! Hyrum was happy, and the rest of us were happy because he came home with a pile of sweet loot that he very generously shared with the rest of us.
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