Norman Rockwell Halloween

My last foray into Norman Rockwell territory did not go well, but when I saw this uh-dorable Halloween-themed cover, I knew it had to have a place in the countdown. As usual, love all the details, from the peek of poofed-out pink dress under the sheet to the dog's happy waggy tail. The original, which feature more chalkboard-unfriendly details, is also worth a look, just to see the old guy's spectacles flying off his face (he is also decidedly less rotund than in this picture).

I also love this picture because it reminds me of an age-old saying: "When a little kid tries to scare you by dressing like a ghost and shoving a Jack-o-lantern in your face, you freak out."

Dave's first-view reaction: Huh. What's goin' on here? ["Well, there's a little girl, and she's dressed up as a ghost, and she's scaring that old guy. I mean, sort of scaring. He's being a good sport about it."] What about the dog? ["He's just hanging out, being happy."] Just like our dog!

Night of the Living Dead

"Baaaaaaarbraaaa... They're cooooooming for yooooou!"

Ah! I love this movie so much. The original zombie flik, it's one of those old horror movies that is just as creepy and entertaining today as it was back in the sixties (I mean, I assume). Also, how awesome is Ben, the preternaturally calm, resourceful, and damn likeable hero?* And how annoying is Barbra? I mean, I get that when your weird brother turns into a zombie, that's sort of a traumatic thing to deal with, but can't you even put on your own not-sensible shoes?

I try to convert as many people as possible to Night of the Living Dead, although it's not easy. In college, I found a VHS copy** and got Dave and his roommates to watch all of fifteen minutes of it before they decided that "fear is not really an emotion that should be encouraged." As a compromise, they let it play in the background of our Halloween party, partially obscured by a sheet so that all you could see were shadowy blobs trying to eat each other. Actually, pretty scary.

This was another lickety-split muralcle, and despite how simple it is, I love it! Creepy zombie little girl, complete with dead eye and prim Peter-Pan collar. It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but it's also HUGE, taking up more than half of the chalkboard wall, and every time I look over it's like this giant, green, floating head staring back at me.

Dave's first-view reaction: Woah. That is creepy. I got the shivers.


*Spoiler alert! Highlight for more Ben-related thoughts: OH EM GEEEE HOW CRAZY IS IT THAT HE GETS SHOT AT THE END?!?! I mean, really, all the crap he goes through and survives (like a badass, I might add), and then he gets shot by a bunch of rednecks?! Maybe the only horror movie ever that is more heartbreaking than it is scary. UGH.
**I'm not actually as old as that sentence makes me sound.

HALLOWEEN

Halloween madness continues with Halloween!* The movie that was so proud it managed to snag its name that it repeated it ten times.

I actually saw Halloween for the very first time last year and it was soooooo sweet! Little Jamie Lee Curtis! Crazy little psycho kid! William Shatner mask! Adorable.

And, I'll admit, this muralcle is also sort of a ploy to ease into the Halloween season, since it's just, like, hand, knife, crazy pumpkin face, letters. Which means: forty-five minutes! A new muralcle record!

Dave's first-view reaction: ["Hey, what was your reaction?"] What's it from? ["Halloween."] ??? ["You know, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Myers, weird white mask." *stabbing motions*] Is it scary? ["Meh."] Haven't seen it.

*Reader PSA! Although I have very strict guidelines from Dave about what is and is not chalkboard-wall-appropriate for this Halloween countdown, there will be a few muralcles that probably aren't so kiddo-friendly.

It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!

“What if I did a countdown to Halloween?”

“No.”

“I think it could be fun.”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t have to be all bloody and gory. It would be cool!”

“No. I don’t want anything scary on the wall.”

“But, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! Nightmare Before Christmas! SIMPSONS TREEHOUSE OF HORROR!”

[sigh] “Okay, fine. But I don’t want to see Chucky or anything.”

"Well that would be ridiculous. It's not even Halloween-themed."

And that, folks, is how I got Dave to agree to a Halloween countdown on the chalkboard wall!

See, all summer I've been busy with family visits, road trips, and editing my manuscript,*  but in the last few days, I turned in my last edits, we made it home, and Chicago got cold enough to ensure our family won't be coming to visit for at least eight more months. 

So what do I do with all this free time? Let's see what the puppy says:

TUG TOY FOREVERRRRR

Nope! Thirty-one chalkboard drawings, all counting down to one of my favorite holidays, Halloween.

I'm starting with a heavy-hitter, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! As usual, despite having Charlie Brown's name in the title, this is all Linus's show, as he waits in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin to arrive (metaphor? kids' cartoons shouldn't be this existential). 

I melded this image together from two separate images, which is why there's a Charlie Brown on the left AND ALSO a kid wearing a ghost costume filled with holes, which fans know is the costume worn by, who else?, Charlie Brown! Yes, there is a metaphysical mystery in the chalkboard muralcle. This does not bode well for the next thirty days...

Dave's first-view reaction: Nice, love.**

SO MANY MORE PHOTOS AFTER THE JUMP!!!!

*Hey, I have a real job! Or as much as you can call "sitting in my pajamas writing about history and magic" a "real job."

**Setting a low bar. Strategic.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

This is pretty much as close as I'm going to get to a summer-themed chalkboard muralcle. Instead of those little fishermen clinging to their boats for their lives, try to imagine them chilling with their swim trunks and flippie-floppies.

Oh man. It has been a crazy summer and I barely had the energy to do another muralcle, so I'm glad I went with this one. Big, bold colors, lots of white space, a subtle background that even my little chalks could replicate--just what I needed.

I do wish my blues had been a little closer to the original, which are more ultramarine and complement each other better. This is also one of those muralcles that looks better in the photos than in real life (yay...), and until I saw the pictures, I wasn't sure how happy I was with it.

Still, it was nice and easy, sort of relaxing, and now my chalkboard looks sort of beach-y (look! the ocean!). I should do all my muralcles after 19th century woodblocks.

Dave's first-view reaction: Oh I like it. Did Dr. Seuss take inspiration from this? (wha?) Doesn't it look like a scene from a Dr. Seuss book? ... You don't have to put this whole conversation on your blog, I'm just asking.

Christina's World

Poor Rousseau. The lion and the gypsy only stayed on the chalkboard wall for two weeks before they were unceremoniously wiped to make room for a pie menu for our pie party last weekend (verdict: seven pies = success).

My favorite of the night: Lemon Cheese, but the Cherry went the quickest

When it came time to put a new drawing on the wall, I debated a bit. I just went to the Art Institute and I love George Seurat's A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte. At first I thought the chalk might do a good job mimicking the pastels, and then I actually looked at how riDICulously complicated it was and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Instead, I chose one of my all-time favorite paintings, Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth. This painting is actually one of the first that I thought of when I decided to do art-inspired chalkboard drawings. I first remember seeing it in a book about composition, how to use natural eye-tracking movement to properly construct a scene. Christina's World was a textbook example of circular composition, from the curve of the woman's body up to the tire marks, the houses, the sky, and the bend of the fields.

I just love this--the dense, dry field, the stark farmhouses, the woman digging her fingers into the dirt to crawl across the field. It's amazing and beautiful and I was really excited to put it on the wall.

But, in retrospect, it was probably a little too late when I started and I was probably a little too tired to do it justice. Those big swaths of field made me a little crazy (hatch marks! so many hatch marks!), and my projector wasn't working right so the colors turned out a bit wonky (in the painting, her dress is a lovely pale pink, but my projector made it look like a Barbie convertible). I'd saved the figure for the last, thinking I'd get the the tedious stuff out of the way so I could concentrate, but after two hours of dink-dink-dink-dink against the chalkboard, I was exhausted and just had enough time to roughly block things out before bed.

So, my little chalkboard rendition isn't quite as fragile or subtle as the original, but I still like how all the elements came together in the end.

Dave's first-view reaction: Impressive! Don't erase it before I come home. [that would be in two weeks. Not, like, an hour]

The Sleeping Gypsy

Although I really liked having Les demoiselles on the wall for the past month, we're having a lot of visitors to the apartment in the next few weeks, and several naked prostitutes is not really the "welcome to our home" look we're going for, especially in regards to our three-year-old nephew and one-year-old niece.*

So, I wanted something kid-friendly (sorry Frida Kahlo) but nothing too boring, and I thought immediately of Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy. I've always loved how bright and colorful this painting is. It almost feels like something out of a picture book, but it's quite a complicated painting with really interesting colors.

Oh, colors. Sometimes I feel like I should quit trying to replicate oil paintings with my little chalkboard and just stick to works rendered in chalk--it's just tougher to blend colors together. Although here I was pretty happy with how it turned out, the original sky is just so lovely and I was disappointed I wasn't able to capture it exactly.

Still, it was a lot of fun to draw, especially the gypsy woman's multi-colored robe and purple hair, and I loved taking a closer look at the details, like her peaceful expression or the lion's big, wide-open eye. Here's hoping the kiddos enjoy it too.

Dave's first-view response: (Hmm... I don't remember, because he was in the apartment the whole time I was drawing. Actually, he was asleep on the couch and at one point I looked over and saw our dog standing over him and sniffing his face. It was pretty surreal/awesome)

*I told Dave I wanted to avoid a "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" moment. The reference was greatly appreciated.