Last of the Halloween Journal Pictures

 These are the last of the paintings I did for my 2024 Halloween Journal.  In case you did not see the other blog posts of journal pictures, scroll back through the last few posts.  As I blogged earlier, my friend asked that we do a Halloween Journal challenge last year.  We started very early in the year, but 2024 was a very busy year for both of us.  We actually did not complete the challenge until December.   We tried hard, but just finding the time for a hobby was pretty difficult due to health challenges and family issues.  However, we persevered until we had completed the challenge.  

 

The Bonfire Dancer was painted in watercolor.  I have many fond memories of Halloween bonfires.  We danced, we sang, we even jumped through the fire, although the bonfire had burned down to a manageable level before we made the attempt.  

I tried an acrylic painting of a woman in silhouette dancing before the fire, but it did not turn out as well.  It seemed that the colors did not mix as well, and the colors seemed a little garish.

I call this painting The Nightmare.  My family and friends were playing Dungeons and Dragons.  One of the players had a creature called a Nightmare.  The horse had a flaming mane, tail, and hooves were flames.  It could move from the normal plane to the ethereal plane. This is a picture I made of the Nightmare jumping from the ethereal plane into the normal world. 

I love owls.  I painted this some time ago but decided to include it in the journal anyway.  I had made an owl sculpture last year, and I wanted this to be a reminder of that bird.  I used an orange background to simulate the orange glow of the sky at dusk.

It is also a call to attention that the sky (at least around where I live) is always a dull orange at dusk.  We used to have beautiful sunsets, but now all we get is a dusky orange.  The color is due to how much CO2 is in the atmosphere now.  I sometimes wonder what birds think of all the pollution and how they are powerless to stop what humans are doing to their habitat.

Scroll down for more photos.  I have not figured out how to move the pictures around on the page.  It used to be click and drag, but that does not seem to work now.

This painting is called The Witching Hour.  The clock is at 12:00 for midnight.  Most people think that this is the witching hour, so I went with that.  Other people think that the real magical witching hour is exactly halfway between dust and dawn.  

Unfortunately, when I put some sealer on the painting, it started to remove some of the dark paint.  The glow around the witch and the lowest ghost was not intentional.  

The Scarecrow and Corn Rick are pretty much standard Halloween fare.  I can remember seeing hay and corn ricks out in the fields when I was a child.  Piling all that hay or corn stalks up against the rick with a pitchfork was a lot of work. Then farmers started baling hay in big rectangular bales.  Now hay is rolled up into giant rolls.  I don't know how heavy they are, but it takes a lot of farm equipment to roll them and move them around.  

Next week I will be announcing my new projects for 2025.  I am very excited to get started.