Pre-Halloween sale through Sept. 21!

 For the next two weeks (until the clock strikes midnight as the day turns to Sept. 21, central time) I will have a 20% off sale in my Etsy shop. The coupon code is HALLOW2015 and is good for any amount, any number of times.

Here is a sampling of some Halloween themed items in my shop, though you can use the coupon on anything. Both originals and prints are available of many items.

The first item below is a new painting -- an 8 x 10 inch acrylic on canvas. I sketched this last year when the Halloween Artist Bazaar did a "dark hollow" theme. I did two paintings on that theme last year but saved a couple of my ideas for this year, so I just finished it up -- a fox, some luna moths and some pumpkins in a twilit grove.

Stay tuned for more Halloween stuff throughout the next two months! My first selection of ghost stories for the year incidentally is "In Ghostly Company" by Amyas Northcote. Don't know how this one got past me before but it's definitely time to read it now!

Twilight in Fox Hollow

"Flames of the Ghost Lantern"

 

"Lost in the Dark Hollow"

The Owl and the Pussycat Went to Tea

 

"Cauldron in the Dark Hollow"

 

"Sisters of the Crypt"

 

"The Silent Grave"

 

"Keeper of the Keys"

 

"Tower of the Zombie Girl"

A glimpse at what's new for Halloween -- cats, tentacles, ghosts and vampires

The skulls are on the shelves in the craft stores, so it must be time to get a few more Halloween-friendly items out there into the world. This post is just a chance for me to round up a few new items I have on Etsy this month!

I started a few little (3 x 5 inch) canvas panels with black cats on them a long time ago and only just now finished them up for the season. It might be a little bit obvious who my models are, at this point.

 

"The Door to Autumn"

 

This is Angelique, who turned 3 this year and is the most wide-eyed, excitable cat I've ever met. Her eyes are always ROUND and every object is a potential toy or prey. I'm not sure what she was looking at in this picture...oh no wait I do, she was listening to a Keiji Heino record, actually. So I guess she was trying to figure out what to do with those fascinating dissonant sounds...

  

"Playful Pair"

And here we see Shinobi -- age unknown but he's probably at least 8 by now. He's on a diet these days, since hitting about 24 pounds, so there's a lot of cat going on here...but stoic and bulky as he is, he's a real sweetheart. When we play with them with the laser pointer, Angelique (and the other cats...unpictured) zoom around the room, limbs scampering and paws flailing. Shinobi waits for it to come close and he just steps on it with his paw and sniffs it. He's a pretty cool customer.

I've also added one to my revolving collection of "ghosts in bottles" -- the first ones I've done in color, so that's fun, right? Yay!

"Ghost Gallery"

And I've added one to my "traumatized pumpkin" collection as well - this time it's blue tentacles making everything weird and alarming.

"Entangled"

Finally, for now, there is an 8 x 8 painting I did for some album art, but I am offering it up for sale on its own now. Inspired by images in films, along the lines of Hammer from the early 1970s, the long red cloak trails off in a surreal and symbolic gesture of a river of blood.

"Ascent to the Haunted Peak"

 Thanks for looking, if you are looking...more Halloween and haunted art coming soon!

Dark Hollow and Dark Holler

As September draws nearer, things are getting pretty serious with the Halloween stuff popping up. Here are a few more entries in the Dark Hollow art theme by Halloween Artist Bazaar members, as well as a couple of new prints that I have up on Etsy -- which are not Dark Hollow prints, but hey, they are still Halloween.

But another item worth mentioning right now is that over on Dark Holler (see how I did that?) record label, there is a new album available from the band I have been involved with for the past 15 years, Stone Breath. This time around the album is all Timothy and Prydwyn, the pairing that initially drew me to the band when their "A Silver Thread to Weave the Seasons" album was released in the late 1990s. I'm on a bonus track here, but by all means please check out the full album for the most heartfelt, perfect acoustic music you can expect to hear this year. You can also investigate the entire catalog at Bandcamp if digital versions are your thing.

Over in the art department...here once again are my new Halloween works but this time I am talking about the prints that I now have available. You can choose the in 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 inch sizes, and all are in stock as of this writing.

 "Lost in the Dark Hollow" print in 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 by Art by Sarada

 "Cauldron in the Dark Hollow" print in 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 by Art by Sarada

As a side note, I have a few other prints now available of older Halloween art and I will be adding more as the weeks move along their merry way.

"Witch Twins" print by Art by Sarada

"Twilight Tree" print by Art by Sarada

And as promised, here are three more items from other Halloween Artist Bazaar artists. That link right there is to the full HAB shop, but you can also find our stuff on Etsy and other locations...check for the tag HAB, to find a nice assortment!

"Tiny Witch Shrine Box" by Wicked Alterations

"Spooky Tree with Headstone Coffin Box" by Odd Origins

"Will of the Wisp" by Twilight Faerie

Halloween In June (or May, even)

A couple of Etsy teams I'm pleased to be a member of, are starting up Halloween in full force this summer- Halloween Artist Bazaar and Spooky Cute Team. I started selling Halloween art online regularly in 2001, but it wasn't around Halloween...it was actually in February or March. As it turns out, those of us who really like this stuff, don't pay too much attention to the calendar. In fact, I was usually always so busy with other things in the fall with work, that I didn't do a lot of new Halloween art in the weeks leading up to the big day.

But right now, with the worst of summer heat still ahead of us, is a good time to start stockpiling these things, so to that end, I present a small selection of some of my "classic" Halloween paintings that are currently available as originals, and as prints. I have many more but these are some images that have proven popular in the 12 or so years since I originally imagined them, and I'm pleased to actually have originals available for these in 8 x 10 or 9 x 12 inch formats at rather reasonable prices. They are all $80 or below, which isn't bad for an original work of art, and the prints can be had for $8 (5x7) or $12 (8x10).

"

"Haunted" is listed under another name on my painting gallery website Art by Sarada but I like this name better for now. :) An 8 x 10 this is a recently repainted original, and the colors in person are very soft yet striking. Although prints are not yet listed on my Etsy site, they can be made on request.

 "Sisters of the Crypt" is another 8 x 10 recently repainted, with prints also available on request. A zombie girl with Frankenstein stitching and a ghostly mummy girl, descend hand in hand upon an unsuspecting world.

Also available as an original, a small print, or a large print by request, "Ghost Sisters of the Tower," another of my paintings of pairs of ghostly creatures - this is a 9 x 12 and I have painted several versions over the years, but I'm happy to say that an original is in stock as of this writing.

Another of my most-requested paintings, "Dark Lanterns" is available as an original 9 x 12 painting, a small print, or a larger print upon request.

"A Ghostly Meeting" is a painting I always wanted to use on greeting cards, and while that is still something that may come down the road, right now it is available as an original 9 x 12 painting, a small print, or a larger print upon request.

Finally for this post, but not for my shop, is "Alice in the Dark Woods," a sort of signature painting for me -- remembering my dear departed kitty companion, and my impression of a Halloween-inspired Alice in Wonderland wandering through a mushroom forest. As with most of my paintings listed here, it is available as an original 9 x 12, a small print, and a larger print can be made on request.

So that's the first layer of Halloween that is available this summer. I will be adding more to this as the months progress, of my classic Halloween paintings, newly available both as originals and prints...and other stuff too. And please check out the other shops in both of these teams as the months move towards autumn!

Woodland creatures on parade

Well I'm posting this on all the sites that I frequent, because I'm just tickled with how it turned out. Although by calling it "Twilight Halloween Parade" I might be inadvertently inviting fans of a certain sparkly vampire series to click on it, that was certainly not my intention. Sometimes 'twilight' does in fact refer to the time of day!

I like the long rectangle as a canvas size and I have a few blank ones lying around for other purposes. Since I'm not a fan of stretching my own canvases (believe me, I would just break everything in the house in my attempt to stretch them...and also my entire workspace is one-half of the sofa, so I don't have a lot of room to maneuver) I am happy when they offer interesting sizes in the stores.

The critters in this painting are inspired by my woodland friends and things I've encountered over the summer. The woods have been full of mushrooms in every shape, size and colour this summer, and I've seen an unusual variety of moths and caterpillars even during the day (though not a luna moth yet this year, I am sure they are around). As for black cats, well I have one so they are always around. We had an owl in the vicinity this year that I heard many times at night, and we had bats in the attic last year -- this year I helped to build bat houses for a conservation group. The ponds were full of giant snails and everywhere I went I seemed to be walking smack into a spiderweb.

So here is a little parade of my friends as they carry their jack o'lanterns on a trick or treating expedition. This painting will be featured in the Etsy holiday showcase tomorrow most likely, and I will try to book another showcase spot later in the month for something or other as well.

Three little paintings!

Three little 5 x7 paintings all in a row -- on eBay this week to usher in September, when suddenly it starts to seem a little less weird to the average person that I have ghosts and pumpkins all over my clothes.  Ahh, the best two months of the year.  I watched Blood from the Mummy's Tomb while I finished these up and made progress on a large, 12 x 24 piece.

I can't really tell whether people in general like big or large art better.  I've had commissions for pieces as big as 3 x 4 feet -- they would have been larger, but there was no earthly way to ship them unless they were picked up in person, if they were any larger.  I have a hard time scaling things down to something 5 x 7 inches, but on the other hands it can be hard to fill up all those large spaces in the big paintings.  I think that I'll always like 9 x 12 the best...just big enough to balance on your lap while you watch monster movies.