A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream (Part 5) - Monsters from the Id

A continuation from A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream (Part 4)

So after realizing that Adobe products were going to be out of my reach (without the dream possibility of upgrading toward a full suite in inexpensive increments), I decided to look around further, and this was actually very informative. It got me to consider my next trial download which was Corel Painter 11 which is great fun with the Wacom tablet!

With Corel Draw you can get very expressive, because there are a huge number of pen and brush styles that combine fantastically with the pressure sensitivity of the tablet. Whereas Illustrator seemed more exacting and strict, Corel Draw was great for free-form expression. Without trying to recreate any of my sketches just yet, I just doodled around with the settings of the charcoal and pens to create this bit of weirdness:

This, I admit, took me on a bit of tangent, exploring how sculptural I could get with the sensitivity and shading. And continuing with my doodles, created this bit of alien-esque fantasy. (Having no anatomical guidance or backdrop for the first, I realize it's a bit off, so I took the first into Photoshop and just played with a bit of mirroring on the latter two)... 

I really hope to explore this program more in future, but my end goal was to create a total of 37 illustrations, and quickly. I didn't see how I could do that with this program... And, honestly, I just didn't have a big budget, so when someone finally suggested freeware - I skeptically decided I might as well take the time to investigate the options... and that was when I found a good link that lists these: 15 freeware graphic programs.

I decided to download InkScape, which seemed more inline with my vector needs, to create simply-designed, repeatable graphic characters that I could tweak from one image to the next.

I'll continue that story in Part 6.

A Brief History of the Pumpkin Dream (Part 3) - Dimensional Trauma

A continuation from A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream (Part 2)

After finishing the handmade booklet (2006) of the poem, then called October Dreams: A Cautionary Tale, there was a sense that in some way the poem itself was generally complete. However, on occasion, when the next Halloween would roll around, as part of my seasonal tradition, I would fire up my clunky laptop (or scribble on a printed version) with tweaks of word choice or narrative... (and there were still bits of cut verses that lingered at the back of the documents, and I suppose these alone were telling me that I was not yet done: see Paragraphs of Yellowed Print).

In 2010, Halloween coming around again, I was making a fateful push to instead create 3D objects, but at the time (after much hair pulling), decided not to pursue until I had a better sense for the process. (Hopefully, I can pick some of those up again as I slowly learn from other paper casters about materials)...

Sculpey bas-relief that I had attempted to turn into paper casting of same,
(I plan to rethink those legs)...

Is that a tear in your eye abandoned, and incomplete pumpkin-witch bobble....?



An army of incomplete bobble Christmas elves (plaster cast).

The result of what you see pictured above? I returned to writing and working on my standard holiday tradition of the poem, this year though determined to have it ready by May of 2011 before the next 2011 Halloween. I was boosted by the few months previous of intense sketching in my notebooks (for the aforementioned 3D projects), that with a surprising conclusion told me I needed to completely illustrate my poem.

That story could be a number of entries (of trial and error) in itself. On to part 4.

A Brief History of the Pumpkin Dream (Part 2) - Ghosts from the Past

A continuation from A Brief History of the Pumpkin Dream (Part 1)

By the time Halloween 2006 had rolled around, the poem had taken it's general length and narrative, and there were even a few rough illustrations created for it... this was all to correspond with a handmade version of the book, maybe about 10 total (?), that  I produced for a few close friends and for people at work, (this was when I was working as a Design Showroom Librarian - a very nurturing environment for creatives - thank you Jane!)

The packaging consisted of reclaimed cardboard envelopes (created many years ago by David and I'm still trying to use these all up...), that I attached with some printed imagery - (the lantern photographed on front was also by David; we had created papier mache pumpkins for a Halloween party a couple or so years previous).

The book itself was laborious. I printed out all the pages, cut them to size and folded, cut the plastic and incised it for what is called a living fold, and then riveted it all together). I realized, as seems to be the case with many projects for me, that this was great for a one-off event, but trying to create something like this for sell would hit my "boredom" button very quickly. I loved coming up with the design but the manufacturing part is not for me... and at the time I registered the whole item as a fun distraction.

Before heading off to Part 3, I wanted to look again into the small bit of illustrations, about 4 for this iteration (one shown above). They were mostly old photographs merged into various collages (similar to work shown here: Flickr - Haunted Visions) but desaturated, etc, for a gritty low-rez print job. Not such great work, since my focus was the poem itself, but I thought, just for yucks, I would relocate and post, although I am still a bit partial to the last image:

 Ghosts peeking through an old window. The original photo was taken through an old factory home near The Dallas Mill in Huntsville, Alabama. 

 A plastic pumpkin of fairly modern manufacturer zooms past 3 monsters. The monsters were a lifesize cardboard decoration David had created for a Halloween party.

This house was my grandfather's house in Lexington, Alabama. I got David to pose in a sheet (for the set seen in the Flickr link mentioned above), and rather shoddily superimposed a pumpkin head on it)...

And this ghoulish pumpkin head concludes Part 2. On to Part 3... or "Where did all the time go?"

A Brief History of the Pumpkin Dream (Part 1) - Halloween Fireworks

In general, near the end of 2004, I had rediscovered how fun holiday art could be, and as a personal tonic for the troubles of the world. My 2004 series of Halloween and Christmas imagery had been great fun, and from there I turned to writing (where I could be just as imaginative without trying to fund materials).

(This particular image is a pier on Greenlake in Seattle, WA in infrared photography)
One of nine images I created for a series called Hallowe'en, used at the time for greeting cards.
Updates: See more at flickr and I just re-posted remaining cards for sell on Etsy

In the summer of 2005, as fireworks were going off just a few blocks away from me in the the party atmosphere of July 4th celebrations, I was sitting with my primitive little laptop, (that was "free" with some miserable card offer), in our teeny tiny apartment, working on the first few lines of what was to become The Pumpkin Dream... a fantastic distraction from the more serious tones of my own fine art, and web content (re: the disaster of the economic downturn that began for myself as money, time, and education thrown into what became the 2001 bursting of the Seattle web bubble...,  a personally disastrous economic turn)...I suppose the explains the somewhat arch yet escapist tone of the poem!

Seattle Jack O'Lantern circa 2005:
(Our favorite pumpkin patch was Craven Farm in Snohomish).

Anyhow, writing, as the most inexpensive art form I could enjoy, (gave my imagination full range to dream), and so that summer I started scribbling down stories and poems in fits and starts. (Hopefully a few more of those will see the light as well)! The Pumpkin Dream originally started that summer as just a few separate small poems that over the following weeks began to huddle together in a larger narrative. From the currently finished version, those lines now seem very primitive to my senses, and this is one of the least offensive passages, that even now I couldn't resist changing a word or two as I transcribed:

this most peculiar, gruesome bunch

confirm our most suspicious hunch
that monsters of the thirty-first
must absolutely be the worst...

Ugh. Well, I can't remember how long I worked on the poem immediately following that initial period, but over the following years, as the other writings I had started during that period sat ignored, I would pick this one up as the Halloween season rolled around and fiddle with the words, trying to hammer out the story, and create strong imagery without losing the narrative... (the latter being my greatest challenge for balance in creative writing, when I really do want someone to understand what I'm trying to express).

I would say that in general the poem by October 2006 had finally taken its overall final shape with a handmade book and a handful of illustrations. And I think that's going to be full of enough content for part 2 of this little history... (Part 2)