Leaf Ghost #217

At long last “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” draws to a close. I can’t believe I’ve been working on this same story since April, spanning nine leaf ghosts.

 In October I watched a string of old Vincent Price horror movies, including several of the Poe pieces he did with Roger Corman. The experience inspired me to switch my intended order up a bit. So after I finished the story, I moved on to “The Haunted Palace” (even though the Price movie had little enough to do with the Poe poem).

It was short enough to fit on the page with room to spare, so from there I went to “Hop Frog.” In addition to being one of my favorite short stories, it also formed a part of the plot of Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death, another October marathon entry. And I fear another tale that looks longer than I remembered.

Leaf Ghost #216

A grey and blue ghost for a grey and rainy day. Tombow N49 and N95 background, 515 and 528 leaf and N25 shadow.

Leaf Ghost #215

In lieu of National Novel Writing Month (rest in peace), this November my project is to at least start getting my diary caught up. The last entry I wrote was in July 2022, though I have notes for most of the days since. Clearly I have a lot of work to do.

On the days when I completed a leaf ghost, I’m including a beginning-to-end set of images of the work in progress. Which of course means that I need to print out nearly 200 of these four picture strips. Just getting them set up in InDesign is taking awhile.

For today’s ghost, I want to start working with leaves that don’t look like leaves. I’m pretty sure this one started life on an oak tree, but it took some interesting twists and turns since it was a bud. It almost becomes completely abstract, which brings the project back to where it started decades ago.

I also like the color combination. Copic earth tones (E09 Burnt Sienna and E04 Lipstick Natural) have just enough red and the blue greens (BG78 Bronze and BG57 Jasper) have just enough green to make them nicely complementary.

Oh, and this is my 52nd ghost of the year, getting me to my one-per-week annual goal a couple of months early. 

 

Leaf Ghost #214

Oh so close! I predict that the next Poe ghost will see the end of our good friends Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.

The wider of the two tech pens loaded with red ink managed to clog up around halfway through. I note that its red was a shade or two lighter after I got it unclogged and replaced the ink. 

Leaf Ghost #213

One thing I like about art is that even the trash is pretty.

Every time I use gouache, I tell myself that I’m going to do a second pass and even out the brush strokes. And every time I don’t do it. At least for now, my excuse is that I’m teaching digital graphic design again, which leaves me with an inclination to be more analog on the weekends.

At this point ghost fans will be familiar with the color scheme. This time it’s Holbein acrylic gouache Carmine, Scarlet, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre and Jet Black.

Also the shape and color of the leaf remind me of a lobster claw, which might be at least in part because I’ve been playing a game with lobster claws in it.

 

 

Leaf Ghost #212

Back to the recent theme: broken leaf, reds (Tombow 845 and 905) on earth tones (Tombow 977 and 991) with a mid grey drop shadow (Tombow N49).

Leaf Ghost #211

Leaf Ghost fans in general and fans of Poe Ghosts in particular may have noticed that the Poe entries arrive once out of every three times. That’s mostly due to Instagram’s three-per-row gallery of past posts. So if one in three is a Poe ghost, they line up.

It also keeps me moving on the sketchbook with the Poe series in it. This is #23, and the book has 100 pages.