Where are my Halloween Sketches

I am still doing them

I just want to first welcome my new followers! I appreciate you all; every subscriber! 

I know many of you have been following me a long time. The past couple of Halloweens, I really haven’t been posting thanks to the tech companies that feel it is ok to steal art. Yes, all of this talk of AI? Those companies like Meta, ChatGpt and all the others, scrape images to train their AI so when you post anything anymore, you are giving them free information and images to use.

This is why you’ll see my posts here and on my website.

But I digress.

Some of you who were with me in Chincoteague last month…that post is coming as well.

Halloween takes a lot of my time. Last month I painted in a plein air event and I researched and sketched my Halloween thumbnails. This month, my sketches are progressing to small 4×6 drawings/watercolors in a small sketchbook dedicated to just Halloween. 

These small works are still sketches but more detailed and getting a feel for final pieces. They aren’t polished but I would like to take them to the next level. I like doing them and putting them in dedicated sketchbooks because I enjoy flipping through them, lol.

Maybe I’ll turn them into a book? My family gets these daily. Let me know if you’d like me to post them daily, otherwise I’ll just send these out once a week.

The prompts for these sketches come from a small group that I belong to moderated by Flori Fama. I am so glad a found another Halloween addict lol.

NOTE: all of my reference images (if I need any) come from my own live sketches, my plein air paintings, my own photos that I have taken, or I use the Museum App where folks post their own images for artists to use. I have a ton of fodder!

NOTE 2: These photos are “as is” and taken with my cell phone. These are more of a “show and tell” and not meant to be polished portfolio pieces. I am showing you my process.

Day 1 – Scary Weather Vane

This is the color palette I am using. All of the sketches this month will be with this color palette.

My color palette

Day 2 Black Pumpkin Hearse

I chose to use orange instead of black because I could make the orange work better on this paper. If I did this digitally or with acrylic gouache, I would use the black. Plus, I like Orange. My “horses” are a cross between horses, thestrels and camels.

Day 3

Day 3 – of tombs and gloom

This one was inspired by sketches I have done back in NY.

I used mostly this sketch (below) for my inspiration and yes, I actually sat in a cemetery and sketched this. The tomb (above) was from a photo I took at St Peter’s Cemetery in Old City Philadelphia.