House of Shadows

Dedicated to Sophie

May 1993 - Nov 2007

It’s been a restful day and we have started putting up the decorations for Christmas. My husband is a huge fan of Christmas and loves to have the house decorated as soon as we can. I always feel we should at least wait until after Thanksgiving…but if he had his way we would have the house decorated for Christmas all year long. I have a useful tip for the ladies of the house; guys if you are reading it can just be our secret. I don’t like to decorate for holidays until I have done a thorough house cleaning. So in exchange for my agreement to get the Christmas decorating done, my husband cleaned all the hardwood floors, so ladies don’t forget to negotiate for those good bargains at home. Now before you guys feel too bad for my husband let me tell you our floors have a Swedish oil finish and all you have to do is mop with water mixed with a touch of vinegar…and I have an electric floor cleaner that makes it a snap. But even with those conveniences, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate his help around the house.

As I plan my Halloween projects for the year, I can see some of my ideas will work for both holidays. And I have promised my hubby I’ll make a large Nutcracker prop for next Christmas and a life-size Santa for the year after. I have a beautifully illustrated book with a Nutcracker on the cover that will be my inspiration for the first project. I can see I’m going to be very busy in the studio next year.

When we put up the tree we always light the fire and drink hot chocolate. Our canary, Shakespeare, loves listening to Christmas music, especially if Bing Crosby is signing. Shakespeare adds an extra touch of festivity at Christmas by signing along with the music. We picked him up from the breeder right after Thanksgiving, eight years ago. His first experience with music at our house was the music of Christmas I think that’s why he enjoys it so much. Although Shakespeare loves classical music, and Frank Sinatra, his signing is always most animated when he listens to Christmas music.

Our dog Alistair is a Jack Russel Terrier with boundless energy and more than enough love for everything in life. He is nine years old and spent his first Christmas without his older sister, Sophie, last year. Sophie, our beloved Schnauzer, was six years old when I brought Alistair home. She was absolutely befuddled by this little creature. We had to follow her around with a towel to wipe the drool from her beard for two weeks because she was just so excited and confused by this puppy that all she did was constantly hover over him and drool. They were the best of buddies and it was difficult to put her down. She rests in a special place in my garden. We’ve watched the strangest phenomenon for over a year now. I planted a yellow pansy over her grave. It flowered all that first winter and into the spring. It continued to flower in the hot summer when all the other pansies died out. Sophie’s pansy gets full sun all day long…it should not have survived the summer sun. However, it’s never quit blooming since the day I planted it. In fact, as I write this Blog Sophie’s pansy is blooming just as bright and sunny as her personality was. I like to think it is her way of saying thank you for caring enough to do the right thing for me. She is missed but will never be forgotten.

Now on to the topic of the day. This is the second post of pictures I’m using to evaluate the expression of grief through body language to plan my “Beloved” project. If you are just joining us and want to catch up with this series you can go back to November 28 to start reading from the beginning. The pictures I’m posting today show the mourning figures in a horizontal position, which is the traditional position used for “Beloved” props I’ve seen. I find looking closely at pictures helps me develop a vision in my mind’s eye for how I want my project to look. I may see a hand gesture I like in one, ornamentation in another, fabric draping in another, etc. If these pictures provide a reference for you sometime in the future, then I’m meeting one of my goals for this Blog.

This series will continue tomorrow with a few more pictures of statuary and Tuesday I will begin to look at details of ornamentation. Until next time ….

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This is the first post in the series exploring cemetery art to evaluate expression of sorrow through body language. I will be using this study to plan the design for my Beloved project. If this is your first visit to the House of Shadows Blog you may want to read the explanation of this series beginning on November 28.

Traditional Beloved props show the figure of a grieving woman laying horizontally over the tomb of her of her husband. I may go that direction, however, I want to explore other options as well. The purpose of the pictures that will be posted today and tomorrow is to study various positions of the body, hands and fabric draping.

I have more pictures to post in this series; however, tonight I look as weary as the woman at the top of the page. As I continue to work on page design and explore the explosive number of plugins available for Wordpress I’m continually living in a world of exploration, and that translates in English to “trial and error”. Today I tried my third photo management plugin, which I find all have advantages and disadvantages. Posting these pictures was an exhausting process for someone new to Wordpress and plugins. However, I’m still a strong believer in learning by doing and once again I won the battle! Tomorrow’s post should be a much easier process.

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As you can you see, my dog Alistair is busy recovering from his turkey dinner so we took the day off today. I will be starting a new series tomorrow focusing on cemetery art. I chose this topic to assist me with some decisions about how I design my “Beloved” prop to make the best use of a vintage dress I bought on eBay for the project.

If you are not familiar with the “Beloved” tombstone it simulates a woman mourning over the tombstone of her beloved husband with the inscription “Beneath this simple stone, my precious darling sleeps alone”.

There are several examples of the beloved project online that I find are useful references. It’s one of the benefits of being attached to a community of friends that is as sharing as the network on the Halloween forums. Each person adds their own unique elements to a build or tries a new technique which they share. My friend Terra used the examples of others when building her beloved project and I think she added some steps that are outstanding. I feel so fortunate to be able to gain knowledge from her experience and add features that will make my project a unique design built from the concepts of others. If this project progresses as I think it will, I should be incorporating some of the techniques I have learned from Laurie Franklin (Lauriebeast) as well. Before summer arrives I’m sure lessons learned from others will also influence my finished project.

In the upcoming series I plan to post photos focusing on fabric draping, different ways of positioning a mourning figure, aging stone, and ornamental elements. By the end of this series I will also post a variety of methods for creating faux stone, texture, and shading. My beloved project will not be started until the weather improves this spring or summer, but some of the concepts I’m reviewing will be incorporated into finishing the body for the build of the “Immortal Pumpkin” that I’ve named Morti. I hope you find concepts that you can apply to your current or future projects as well. Until next time …

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“Mother’s Darlings”

I have an interest in visiting cemeteries, especially old cemeteries where ancestors rest for eternity. Some might think it’s a morbid curiosity, but for me it satisfies three of my interests: genealogy, history, and art.

What a beautiful expression of love has been captured in the grave marker that reads “Mother’s Darlings”. But my mind is curious to know the story behind the stone. Was there an illness that passed through the town, taking this mother’s children with it? Were the children out playing in a stream on a hot summer day and suddenly swept away? Who are these children? What happened? Perhaps their names are inscribed lower on the stone and they just can’t be seen in the photo. If not, the genealogist in me can only hope that somewhere in a family history, the life and death of these children was captured so their identities are known to someone. This grave maker is just one example of the history that resides in a cemetery. If you haven’t looked at a cemetery with those thoughts in mind give it a try some afternoon.

There is so much to be learned by a quiet walk through an old cemetery. You can look at the markers and see when epidemics swept through an area. You can see the status of a family in the quality of the monument left to honor a person’s life and death. Often times there are clues to what was most valued in a persons life, or what their affiliations were by the art used to decorate the grave marker. Walking through a cemetery is like walking through a history book.

I collect photographs of cemeteries and grave markers for inspiration. They help me study colors, textures and shadows. Cemetery pictures are an excellent resource for you if you plan to build headstones or small monuments for your Halloween graveyard display. The example in “Mother’s Darlings” shows you how fabric would drape if you are using monster mud. It also shows you how stone gets pitted as it ages and the way years of accumulated dirt settles to the bottom of the stone when it’s not maintained. Examples of ornamental details, lettering styles and epitaphs are elements you can explore by walking through a cemetery or looking at pictures.

I will be posting more pictures of grave markers throughout the year under the Inspiration Category. There is a link on the sidebar that will help you find these pictures when you return to the House of Shadows for more ideas. Articles about painting techniques for aging stone will also be featured in future posts. I hope these resources will be useful to you as you work to achieve the authentic looking display you see in your mind’s eye.

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I’m posting to my Blog early today so I can spend the rest of the day finishing the detail work on Morti. He should be getting his first coat of paint in the coming week. Morti will be painted using a combination of airbrushing and paintbrushes. I selected 13 shades of paint to gradually build depth for his final look. One coat of orange paint would not give Morti the menacing look I have in mind. As I paint Morti I will post progressive photos.

There are so many places to find ideas for projects and I stumbled upon one last night while viewing some photos posted on a Photoshop tutorial blog. The picture was of an ancient ruin being overtaken by unbelievably large tree roots. It was a good visual for creating an image in my mind of the way Morti’s lower body can be formed. Perhaps I will post that picture some day. But right now I would like to share a picture of an ancient crypt in the Old Bethany Cemetery in Guadalajara. It is a great inspiration for a crypt to house a flying crank ghost.

The structure has fairly simple lines, except for the pyramidal top which I would probably leave off. The aging of the moss covered crypt is great for reference if you want to have a dark creepy looking feel in your home haunt. I don’t plan to build my crypt until 2010 so I will be continuing to look for ideas that I can share with you. If you have specific areas of interest that you would like me to post on the House of Shadows Blog leave them in the comment section.

Thank you for viewing and subscribing. Your interest motivates me to stay focused on project goals for the year. My first Blog post was entered on November 4. Since that day, twenty-five people have subscribed to the RSS feed. I hope this is a continuing trend and that subscribers will feel free to comment.

Have a great rest of the weekend. I wish you sunshine and smiles throughout the coming week.

If you are viewing this page I probably don’t need to make apologies for my fascination with the unexpected beauty that can often be found in cemeteries. Perhaps not in the modern sterile-looking cemeteries that look as if they were groomed with your mother’s best sewing scissors, but the old, hidden, often forgotten pioneer cemeteries. I find them to be a place of quiet inspiration for many reasons.

For many years, I used watched my mother-in-law pack her wash pail and scrub brush to take to the cemetery for the annual scrubbing of family headstones. She never missed this ceremonious occasion on Memorial Day for the 35 years I knew her before her death. Keeping the headstones clean and free off moss and algae was a labor of love for her. It was her way of paying her respects to family who passed on before her.

This is one family tradition that is difficult for me to adopt. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than old stone that has been lovingly aged by nature. Pits formed by years of exposure to wind and rain, giving foothold to mosses that softly blanket the hard stone in color, and the algae competing for first place in wearin’ o’ the green. Does beauty fade over time, or does it become more alive with character? I say it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Although it seems early in the year to be thinking about starting new Halloween props, it seems time moves faster than greased lightening in my life.I will be posting pictures of cemetery art over the months to come as a source of ideas for those new headstones you need to make for your home haunt next year. This outstanding example of cemetery can be found on a grave in Bruton Parish Churchyard in Colonial Williamsburg, VA. I hope you find it inspirational.