This month in the ATC Exchange group our themes are Fall/Halloween. At the last meeting when it was announced I thought, "Cool -- that sounds pretty easy...I love Fall...I love Halloween. It will be relatively simple to choose something to do!"
Ha! It turns out that for me, having a way wide open choice is pretty difficult. Fall means so many things to me. Halloween images go on forever. How do you choose one main idea???
So many iconic Halloween images have been swirling around in my head the last few days while I was thinking about this...candy corn, ghosts, black cats, witches. I switched gears and tried to think of Fall...leaves, Indian corn, corn stalks, apples...nope, too many again. I had to narrow it down to an absolutely Halloween image with a capital H...and it had to be something I could execute and repeat over several cards, yet make each one individual. Hmmm...what is the very FIRST thing that comes to me when I think of Halloween/Fall? Carving pumpkins!
One of the things that I learned in that linocut class with Shaqe Kalaj at Art & Ideas Gallery was to trust my own drawings. I feel a bit more confident with that now.
So -- here goes...draw a carve-able pumpkin.
My trusty "Black Warrior" pencil helped me make a simple transfer of my drawing onto the carving block.
It's fuzzy, but I can see enough of it.
Darken the lines with a medium Sharpie marker and get carving.
I love the carving part!
Hey...not too bad.
Now to make a test card and try out my idea.
I guess I will be carving Jack o' lanterns this season!
This is just the test card, but I am happy with the idea.
I need to get some more orange-y inks and some more vivid yellow paper. I think this will work!
I need to practice my X-ACTO knife skills with carving out the faces on the pumpkins. No doubt it will go smoother with new blades and maybe a swivel-y style knife with a self-healing pad underneath. That's the plan, anyway! Then some embellishments, perhaps...
NOW -- back to work on the sewing on the buttons for eyes on the second 50 Tookies finger puppets for my current batch of 100 for Art-o-mat. Then later tonight I can hopefully make a Tooklet or two. Heh...and sometimes people say to me, "You don't work...what do you DO all day long?"
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