Little tiny canvases and movie-inspired art

A local art store was having a special on wee tiny 2 x 3 canvases so I have loaded up on them and am obsessed with the idea of making "quadtychs" -- like a triptych, I guess, but there are four paintings in each. This is my first one but there will be more -- basically each will show a continuous scene, but in four parts. They can be displayed side by side continuously, like so:

Or framed individually, or arranged as a square, or whatever! I am very thrilled by them anyway . :P More are planned!

I keep uncovering more and more images that I needed to either update or post anew -- for instance I had some paintings on ArtFire, but I closed that shop for now and I never moved the art back to my Etsy shop. I'm in the process of doing that but in the spirit of Halloween here are a couple that I put up with sort of horror themes.

"She Kills With Colors" has a title inspired by giallo movies, though the image suggests sort of a devil woman who hypnotized her victims with psychedelics. Doesn't it? If it was a movie ~I'D~ want to see it, that's for sure.


And "The Devil Wants a Wife" is inspired by things like pulp horror book/magazine covers or movie posters, from anywhere in the mid-20th century. I've always wanted to do lots of things along those lines but I keep getting sidetracked...

While we're at it I also was able to update the image for this piece, which I had previously photographed but the scan gives it a much more clear and crisp appearance on a computer monitor. This was inspired by the Jean Rollin film "Fascination" which features a cloaked woman with a scythe, but I wouldn't suggest searching for the film if you're at work or in another environment where naked ladies might not be good to have on your screen, because Jean Rollin films are full of them.


And with that we are one day closer to actual Halloween, which is different from the one that I celebrate which is pretty much continuous, though I still never go to parties. :P

Halloweekend!

"A lantern lit the shadows" - now available as a 5 x 7 photo print.

Ok yes I am not the first person to use the phrase "Halloweekend," I admit. :P

I have a pile of new art waiting to scan and post, that is very much along Halloween lines but of course I am posting it just right around the big day itself. No matter! I pretty much observe Halloween all year long -- it just dropped to 57 degrees in Texas today and I hear it is supposed to be snowing this weekend up north where my mom, cats and turtles are hopefully putting on sweaters.

I can't wait to share some of my new work, which ranges from cute to grimly gothic, and some completely unrelated somewhat abstract things, and a little sci fi, but I've been going through my winter art box and finding a few treats to put back in my shop for the season as well.

In the meantime I thought I would gather all of my monochrome ghost paintings/prints here in one spot for fun and for reference in case anyone wanted to see them. Up top is a new print of a painting that sold a little while back -- I wasn't sure how the dark colors would reproduce in a print but I think it worked out just fine! Right below are a couple of more recent pieces still available as originals:





Now, below here is a ghost I painted several years ago who is still available -- again, I think watching too much Dark Shadows inspired it. I also did a commission recently for a variation on this image, of the goddess Hekate, which I will post just below it with some of her symbols around her. It was a joy to create this image and I am grateful to the person who wanted it, for entrusting me with it!

And now, the Hekate variation:



Finally, my most popular piece, the original sold three years ago to a friend and I didn't think it would reproduce as a print because there's so much dark coloring, but another friend asked for a print so I made one and it looked great! Now it has more views, hearts and treasuries than anything else I have on Etsy, and whenever one sells I list another. The original was 8 x 10 so I probably won't offer prints larger than that, but right now I still have a 5 x 7 up for sale.



So there is some grim and occasionally cute dark gothic ghostly stuff for you -- I keep this stuff available all year of course, but for some reason people seem to be more interested in it in October...

What does this have to do with Halloween!

I've been busy with some commissions lately but somewhere in there I was completely distracted from my usual haunted activities by thinking about really, really colorful things. With only a few days until Halloween I should be talking about my usual ghosts and haunted houses, but I wanted to share this before any more time passed, just because! And anyway I think something strange with stripes and a devil face in it is kind of seasonal too...At any rate, this painting was inspired by listening to electronic music and thinking about early 80s video games, the ones where you are trying to build things with pipes, for instance -- but things went haywire and some flowers crept in.

Where I am right now the leaves don't change and there's not a crisp note of autumn in the air quite yet (maybe late a night, when the armadillos come out) but I am still in a fall frame of mind, watching Dark Shadows at night and various movies with the words "vampire" and "Dracula" in them.

Nothing new, of course -- recent viewings include the favorite La Vampire Nue, a couple versions of Dracula; Dracula AD 1972 and other Hammer offerings. And my reading for the moment is still Salem's Lot, which I started several weeks ago in a strange fit of not reading something from the 19th century! But I'll be back there soon!

More haunted art coming soon, into the winter months...because Christmas was always a time for telling ghost stories in Victorian times!...

A few more ghosts...

I have been loading up on ghost/haunted house movies lately, as that has been my favorite motif at Halloween time for some years lately. Ever since I read "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson and the Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories, that has been chief among my obsessions.

I love walls with brocade wallpaper, candelabras, oval portraits, mysterious bookshelves and of course what lurks beyond locked doors and in basements. Normally this time of year I'd also be watching Dark Shadows so that will have to start up soon too.

A few movies that have been watched lately: The House on Haunted Hill, The Legend of Hell House, Thirteen Ghosts, to name a few. Another, Burnt Offerings, was made a little later and didn't quite hit the marks we were looking for, but it had some interesting atmosphere as well. "Thirteen Ghosts" particularly inspired me with an idea for something I plan to paint very soon...

Right now I am also offering up a repainted version of a ghost painting I did about 9 years ago, "Ghost Sisters of the Tower." I've done at least one other repaint of it since then but I wanted to make sure to have a nice fresh version of it that I can take scans from, and of course the painting itself is available -- I love my blue and purple ghost girls!

I'm taking a break from 19th century literature to read Salem's Lot by Stephen King as well, but my movie choices are likely to stay firmly rooted around the 60s/early 70s...which is about as modern as I get.

The Curse of the Lost Print of the Ruby Skull

When I was getting prints made up a while ago I didn't put all of them out for sale immediately and I just realized this one has not been listed! I loved doing this painting -- I did it twice, as I had a commission for it once as well -- and I am happy to be able to offer a print now.

In addition to loving '70s craft books I also love pulp adventure stories from the first half of the 20th century. You know, the kind of things with titles like Spicy Mystery Stories - here's a site with a selection of them, though some of the art may be not-suitable-for-all-audiences, if you know what I mean. And also, many are public domain, so here is one of my faves:



There's also a thick, heavy and somewhat affordable book out called the Big Book of Adventure Stories that collects some choice tales from the past century. Fine literature is it not, necessarily, but it's a bloody good time. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Tarzan; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Conan the Barbarian and many more are in its pages.

I tend to read the turn of the century stories by people like H. Rider Haggard, which are admittedly antiquated by today's standards, but display a kind of creativity and curiosity about unexplored regions of the world that we just don't have today, since you can pretty much see the whole thing on Google Maps.

Finally, I love terrible movies, like Night of the Sorcerers, which is also not-for-all-audiences, but includes vampire women running around in slow motion in leopard skin bikinis. I still harbor some vague notion of making such an outfit for myself for Halloween. :P

I will probably do some more things inspired by this kind of crazy stuff, but I like it best when the ladies are in charge, and not being menaced by goons.

New painting of my purple fairy

I've been working for some time on doing new paintings of some of the favorite images from my gallery, where I've collected some of the paintings I've sold over the last ten years. Above is "Dark Lanterns," which I have painted on several occasions, but until this new version I haven't been able to take a high-res scan of it.

Here's the gallery with my older works in it:

http://www.artbysarada.com

The scans that I made before the paintings were sold in 2001-2003, were not really of a quality that I could make prints from. So although I've had many requests for prints or other reproductions of them, I couldn't offer them.

I have a few things in my Etsy shop as "photographs/prints" but I really want to add to that and offer more things in the future. I didn't have much interest from a Cafepress shop, though it still exists:

http://www.artbysarada.com/cafe.html

But I would like to be able to offer my own reproductions of things in various forms, some day. Maybe little necklaces, in addition to things like postcards, notecards and the current photographic prints.

So far, the fairy painting above, and these two below, are the repaints I've done for Halloween, so I will be able to do more with these images in the future. I've also done several for winter.

As always, if anyone sees anything in my gallery (above) that you think would make a good offering as a print, please let me know and I'll put it on my list for consideration!