Happy Halloween!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/artsyletters
Happy Halloween!
My Etsy shop is on break Oct. 19-26 as I travel for some author school visits. I’ll be shipping out orders again the week of Oct. 31. If you’re in Beaufort, SC, find some fun spooky gifts at The Beaufort Emporium and at Nevermore Books! Mwah-ha-haaa. — Robyn

Art Break Wednesday: Some Gothic Shakespeare for your enjoyment…


gothic shakespeare shadow box collage with c

Seems an appropriate season (and time – it’s coming up on midnight!) to share another recent mixed media adventure.  As my daughter, Morgan, was helping me enter items into my Square inventory on my mini iPad, she asked, “What do I call this?  Gothic Shakespeare?”

I liked the name.

This 6 in. by 8 in. shadow box features an embellished experiment.  I printed my fairy door relief print design on a page from a vintage reader, and the result was rather ethereal and dreamy – but gritty, too.  I loved its mysterious “air” and pondered using it as the backdrop for an altered page collage.  Pondering turned to pasting…

Somehow a vintage typewriter key seemed perfect to place near the top – the numeral 0 with a parenthesis which looks quite like a moon.  Then, the “Floating Shift” key, featured in a copper tray and attached to a mini canvas on light green paper and a gothic shakespeare top closer uppainted black background, floated itself up in a corner.

In another vintage book, I found a wonderful snippet from Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” – this seemed just right:

Hermione.    Pray you sit by us,
And tell’s a tale.
Mamilius.      Merry or sad shall ‘t be?
Hermione.   As merry as you will.
Mamilius.      A sad tale’s best for winter.
I have one of sprites and goblins.
Hermione.  Let’s have that, sir.

shakespeare detail winters tale gothic collage

Beside this text I added an old clock hand (the reverse side – the lighter color contrasts with the black frame), and a small vintage metal rectangle graces the bottom edge.  On the top right, I placed this luscious little embellished metal door hardware.  (This was a find from my favorite antique dealer at the monthly Flowery Branch (Ga.) Antiques Market – I was able to get  a few!)

Here’s hoping a little haunted art makes you smile.  Wishing you ghoulish inspirations as the month carries on… Bwa haaa ha ha ha.gothic shakespeare angle

 

Art Break Wednesday: Happy Halloween!


Wishing you and yours more treats than tricks.

What makes certain images spooky?  Subject matter, of course – but it’s also color, quality of line, and what the piece conjures up in the imagination.

I carved the above relief print to accompany a poem I wrote for Jama Rattigan’s amazing blog, Alphabet Soup.  I was honored to be one of her guest poets for April. The poem is called “Spooky Brew.”

My brother and I LOVED Halloween growing up.  We turned our suburban home into a haunted house every year and the neighbor kids piled through.  Our wonderful mom played right along – I think she enjoyed it as much as we did. (Thanks, Mom!)

I can remember drawing Halloween pictures as a kid – witches on brooms, black cats, jack-o-lanterns.

I’ve always had a thing for black cats. This one is actually a panther, I guess, but it was all I could find handily. I must have drawn it at about age 10 or 11.

These all had sharp edges and bold, jagged, pointy lines.  Mwwahahahahahaha….

 

 

 

 

 

And somewhat related, a confession:  my brother and I were afraid of a certain letter Y in the Encyclopedia Britannica.  (Remember that, Mike?)  I think the top of it was curved in some way.  Whatever it looked like, it spooked us!  That’s likely one reason I’m so crazy about lettering and fonts and such to this day.  There is great power in a few strokes of black, a few marks on paper.

Whose spooky art do you admire?  Edward Gorey?

Maybe some of Tomi Ungerer’s?

Tim Burton?

Share your thoughts below!  (No tricks, now….)

Here are some more  frightfully wonderful suggestions from your comments:

Bernie Wrightson

The terrifically talented Toni deTerlizzi

I’ll toss in another – the work of Mary GrandPré on the Harry Potter …more?