Artist Jennifer Parks is part of the Pony Club Gallery collective and was kind enough to include me in this upcoming show in April. Naturally, I’m pretty excited about the ghoulish theme.
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll already know about some of the sketches and studies I’ve been doing for my contribution; a black & white number of spirits in the dark forest.
Since I’ve finished these drawings, I feel ready to move on to the final piece. OOOH! Exciting stuff, indeed.
Initial sketch
Ghost studies
Small pencil draft
Materials study
I don’t normally perform this much prep work, but there are many components of this drawing that I needed to sort out besides a composition.
I played around with a few “cutesy” spirits before settling on decidedly more “creepy” spirits. I also wanted to integrate more of the bleeding paint technique that I developed with my last art show, Sticks + Stones, so I did a painted forest study.
And then there was the matter of the ghosts themselves – should I paint them in gouache? Allow the white of the paper itself to embody the spirits?
Tracing paper has an inherently ghostly quality, so it seemed the most natural choice. Plus it’ll be like working with little ghost dolls! Cutting them out and adhering them to the dark forested background will be a fun challenge in itself.
Look for glimpses of the final piece in the coming weeks, as I bounce around the different projects I’m working on.
