Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook-October, Eva

Its been quite awhile since I had a sketchbook to work in.  I'm actually kinda thankful that some of them were delayed as the last part of 2011 was a bit busy without the stress of getting entries done and out in a timely manner. 

This book belongs to Eva and I hope you'll visit her blog and see all the lovely things she does.  I seem to have a skip in months as the last one I did was for August and this book came ready for me to do the October spread.  Not a big deal, but I had formulated some basic ideas for September and hadn't for October (Crap!!) so I had to do some serious thinking before I could start painting.  It was odd to think of Halloween when the world is inundated with Chocolates, hearts and all things Valentine.  This October I spent quite a bit of time working in a haunted house so I thought it'd be cool to try to bring some aspect of that to life for my entry.  Spooky old house with huge lit windows.  A monsterous harvest moon with tree limbs outlined in its glow.  And of course a black cat on the fence.  I really liked working on this once my idea was in place. 

I wanted to try something new, something I hadn't seen before but had an idea for, and thus the fishing line spider web took shape over top of the journal spread.

 

And then I had to incorporate something with the web on the reverse side where my thoughts on October reside.  I wrote different things that I love about October along the spider web on this spread to give it a bit more depth and interest.  I also gave my not so creepy crawly spider green glitter eyes!

This book will be sent of to Lisa later today.  I always have so much fun doing these entries and it is so wonderful to see the great art that each of them holds.  I can't wait for the next one to arrive!

Thanks for stopping by!



My photo op stand-in

I have a great friend who runs a haunted house and a corn maze each fall.  I volunteered to help paint some things for her.  I was excited to do this for a few reasons. 

1.  Its always a great experience to help someone. 

2.  It would allow me to paint something I've never done before. 

3.  It would allow me to paint on a scale I've never done before. 

4.  It would allow me to work with someone to decide on a concept together and then help make our joint vision become reality. (As opposed to me painting my usual subjects.)

We decided it would be fun to have one of those photo-stand in's for visitors to take pictures with.  I brainstormed a few ideas and did some rough sketching.  After some consultation, we decided to do a farmer and his horse peeking out from a barn door.  She bought me a huge sheet of plywood, tons of paint and left me to it.  I sketched in the design and then left the cutting out to the "head holes" to someone else.  I can't be trusted with power tools!  In the picture below, the area above the roof still needs to be cut off, but the rest is the final project.  This was really fun and challenging for me and I'm pretty happy with the results. 

I also helped paint in the haunted house.  The moon and the owl eyes are black light responsive, and also glow in the dark.  This passageway also has many bolts of lightning as you walk through.  It was fun to work on this room as everything is so huge!  I have to admit to freaking myself out while painting in the haunted house.  My friend left so I was in there alone and although the lights were on, it was still pretty spooky.  Especially when the wind would blow the plastic that hangs throughtout the maze like house and make sounds like someone was in there with me.  It was really spooky when I was painting near one of the blind corners and I kept hearing things.  No one can ever accuse me as to having an underactive imagination.  They can call me a scardy-cat, but not unimaginative!

Thanks so much for stopping by.