Pumpkin Dreams for Sale

As October rolls around, and I'm busily preparing for the 6th Annual Halloween Trunk Show here in Denver, it seemed only appropriate to create a pre-show discount on this year's new illustrated Halloween poetry book The Pumpkin Dream.

This also gives me a chance to try out this coupon code thingy that you can do as an author of a book via CreateSpace. If you order The Pumpkin Dream via CreateSpace (directly from the distributor that is) in the next two weeks (from now September 24th until October 7th) and use this code: 54G4ZYNU, the book will sell for $11.95 rather than the regular $14.95.

I've also just newly discovered these gallery modules from flickr, and here is a selection of imagery posted from the book's origins to final first edition/industry edition printings:

Pumpkin Dream Sketchbooks #1: Surreal

Some days before deciding (for certain) on a more vintage, representational style for "The Pumpkin Dream" there was some thought of creating pen drawings, and in a more surreal style, somewhat more akin to the pen and ink drawings seen here on wobblebox. There was really only one sketch to speak of in this mode - seen below where there was an attempt to take elements from the poem, and then sit down for a session of surrealistic doodles... (this sketch would have paired with the first eight lines of the poem):

When tattered oaks of autumn lend
prophetic chatter to the wind
and gremlins from a branch dispatch
with felon deeds upon your latch

We trust our tale illuminates
of bogymen whose hunger slake
on children in a sugar feast
the fearless know as trick-or-treat

While I would still love to find the time to do this illustration style (perhaps in some later edition down the road), the thought of trying to create 37 drawings that I would be happy with... while so many other tasks needed to also be done (this book was DIY on everything), I gave this up for something I thought would be more editable - vector art (see the first blog entry Sketchy Beginnings and/or A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream (Part 4) - Cautionary Vectors).

Well, in going back into my sketchbooks, it appears I did almost a full round of more representational style art, and then for some reason (probably the zero budget) vacillated back toward the possibility of pen and paper once again (see below). I think this next drawing (probably inspired more so by being very tired) was a thought toward doing something sort of retro, loose, and surreal with lots and lots of negative space.  And I was apparently still trying to figure out the first lines of the poem, which were perhaps the hardest lines of the poem to complete - and there are likely hundreds of versions of the beginning)....

I guess part of me is very interested in Halloween imagery with a little surrealistic twist - and in looking back through the sketchbook - even before the idea to do "The Pumpkin Dream" was settled in my mind... I found this whimsical drawing that takes the Jack O'Lantern into some weird realms - such as the octo-pumpkin?

Next up: Pumpkin Sketchbooks #2: Versions