October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 31 - Jack O

 Day 31 - Jack O.

Here's the pumpkin I carved tonight. Happy Halloween! This year's Monster Madness has come to an end. But that's not all, as Frosty says...I'll come back again some day. Wait.....Frosty? Christmas? Hmmm..... To be continued....

Artist Notes - Carved the pumpkin. Took a picture of it with my Motorola Xoom. Used Sketchbook Mobile Pro to erase everything else that was in the picture. Exported it to DropBox. On my Dell Windows 7 Laptop, I used CorelDraw X5 to fit it to the size I wanted. Added a background and signature. Then topped it off with the words "Happy Halloween" using the font "Dock".

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 26 - Jack Painting

Day 26 - Jack the Pumpkin Head painting.

Here's a painting I've been planning on all month and finally got around to doing it. It's a painting of Jack from my book Jack the Pumpkin Head. It's available on Amazon, iTunes and the Barnes & Noble Nookstore.

Artist Notes - This a painting on a black canvas using acrylics.

Halloween Hijinks

Happy Halloween!!!! Here are a few pictures from tonight and things that Angie and I made throughout the month of October.

October Monster Madness 2008 - #6

This is from one of my favorite spooky stories, Washington Irving's Sleepy Hollow. This is monster #6, the Headless Horseman.

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Technical details: I used two Pilot Precise Rolling Ball pens, one V7 fine and one V5 extra fine. I didn't use any pencil, choosing to sketch with the pen. It creates a more improvisational line. Then I scanned them in and colored them using CorelDraw X4.

Jack the Pumpkin Head, original sketch 1997

So, we were rooting around our storage and I came across some old drawings. I will end up posting some of these eventually, but one thing I found very interesting. I found one of the original sketches of Jack, from my new children's book, "Jack the Pumpkin Head". Kind of cool to see him since I just finished the book. He is a little fatter in the face, but other than that, he didn't change too much in eleven years.

Halloween Children's Book - Update Finished and Published

Whew! I just finished uploading the final files for my latest children's book, entitled "Jack the Pumpkin Head". It is available for purchase at the following address - http://www.lulu.com/content/3990650. If you have problems or questions about ordering, please feel free to email me at mcrosser@teamexpansion.org. I have had a great time working on this book and feel very satisfied that it is finished. There are some cool background notes. Throughout the book I put some "Easter Eggs". For those who don't know "Easter Eggs" are hidden things in a book, dvd, game, etc... On one page I put the street address of our first home, where I came up with the original idea for Jack the Pumpkin Head. Another street corner represents the home address that I grew up at. On a fence post there is a hidden dedication to Angie. Also, the character Andy has a couple of interesting notes. First of all he is wearing a ghost costume. It is similar but chosen because of my love for Charlie Brown's Peanuts comic strip. One of the best holiday videos in my opinion is "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". The second thing about Andy is that while you never see him in the book (due to the ghostly sheet) it isn't the last you'll see of him. He is actually the main character in another story I have been working on since 2002. That story takes place at Christmastime. I have had quite a creative burst of ideas lately, so more things are in the pipeline, but with Jack done, I'll take a little break. Not long, just a bit in order to relish in the completed project. This is a book I started in the Fall 1997, that's eleven years. It's nice to have it done.

Halloween Children's Book - Update Inked & Colored

Here is the opening page of my new story, Jack the Pumpkin Head. There won't be any words on the page, and I may or may not do some final touch ups on the page in Corel Photopaint.

Halloween Children's Book - Update Pencils

Here are some pencils for the halloween themed children's book that I am working on. The title of the book is "Jack the Pumpkin Head". All of the pencil work is done, next is inking, erasing, rescanning, importing into Corel, Digital-tracing, staging, coloring, shading, finalizing each scene, exporting the final jpegs, setting the type for the book and laying out the pictures, then exporting the pdf to upload to my publisher. Whew, I was planning on finishing it in my days off and spare time over the next few weeks, seems like a lot left to do. Anyway, check out the pencils below....

Halloween Children's Book

In the Fall of 1997, I carved a pumpkin while we were living in our very first home. As I walked by this pumpkin throughout the season, an idea began to germinate. I drew a pumpkin headed character with spindly and viny appendages. Leaves and twigs shot out from its elbows. Every year since, I would pull that old idea out and polish it. Every year, thinking a little more about who and what it was. What was its story? Who did it become? As the years went by the story got a little more defined in my head, adding a paragraph here and a single line there. Mostly, I draw, or said better I create. Create stories, drawings, characters, ideas, etc.... So many that will never see the light which live inside my brain. Finally after rolling around in my head for years, the idea came bubbling forth on October 11, 2007 in Ancona, Italy. We only had a few weeks left living in our apartment in Ancona. I was already feeling nostalgic about leaving it, and yet my creative juices were flowing. I had been exercising my creativity through many different outlets of work and personal life. I have taken Thursday's as a day off since 1995, at least. That Thursday, I felt the story coming out, so I sat down and wrote what had been captive in my head for ten years. It flowed generously. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I didn't always write straight through. In fact, more often I skipped from the middle of the story, to the end, then back to the beginning again. I wrote without stopping. Then I stopped typing. I had finished the first draft. I showed Angie and then made corrections. I read it again, then made corrections. I read it to the kids on the Ancona team and then made corrections. We returned to the states October 3oth, and I read it to our nieces and nephews, then made corrections. I sent it to my story/idea partner, Milton, then made corrections. I sat it aside for several months, then picked it back up a couple weeks ago. I went through and tightened the story some more, editing here and there. Then tonight I went through and planned out the pictures. I sketched through each of the pages of the story. It looks like it will have about 52 pictures in it. Fat Baby, the book that Milton and I did a couple years ago, had only 32 pictures. So this will have even more. I am excited to start drawing the pages and I hope to have it done within several weeks. I would love to put it in some area shops in time for the Halloween season. Who knows, I might sell one or two. I am just excited to get to this phase.