Sketch, sketch, sketch...Sketch......and sketch, ske....

Here ya go Patch,

How did I create my Halloween painting? Well, this painting wasn't easy. I mean as far as drawing and painting goes, it wasn't any harder than usual. It was the idea, the concept and the design that was difficult. When I began to come up with ideas, they were either just horror themed ideas that did not pertain to the holiday or they were cliche concepts I had seen numerous times before. I did not want to repeat image history.

So, I researched my reference files (as well as Google) to look for inspiration. After collecting over 20 or so images, I began to doodle a variety of different ideas. Ultimately, I thought it would be unique to take the photo of a sculpted boy and draw him on orange paper with green chalk. While it sounded like a good, creepy idea to put a clown costume on the boy and use the color palate of Halloween, it just lacked something...The Wow! factor.

So, back to sketching. Sometimes, illustrations only require one or two drawings. Not this illustration. The collection of drawings below is about half of what I did trying to work out this Halloween concept.

I love using tracing paper for these type of drawings. I am not ashamed to trace at all!

When I realized I was going to draw the entire body of the Trick r Treating boy. I purchased a pumpkin bucket ($1) at Goodwill, put on my puffy shirt, and my partner, Valerie, shot some photos of me --that's right! I own a puffy shirt. And so should you! Need reference of pirates, a prince, or halloween costume, well you need a puffy shirt.

Thanks to Photoshop, I was able to distort my sketch to achieve a more dramatic view of the Trick r Treating boy.

The final sketch, above, done on tracing paper with pencil.

Unfortunately, I have only one photo of the oil painting in progress. In my typical process, I began to paint the objects in the back ground first. I gave extra efforts to paint the heads in the back ground as well as I could in one sitting (8hrs) knowing I was probably not going to have time to go over them with a second, more refined coat of paint. To accelerated the drying process of the wet oil paint, I placed the painting inside of my car for a couple of hours during a hot, sunny day.

A friend of mine used to place her paintings in the oven on low. She once forgot about her painting in the oven and returned it, to discover a burned painting. Needless to say, she did not use her oven for drying paintings anymore.