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Long Lost Friend Studio is my self-publishing imprint, the studio space where we work, and a YouTube channel featuring videos about art and creativity. This blog covers everything happening with me and Long Lost Friend Studio.
Climbing Over The Garden Wall For Halloween
Ten years ago, Patrick McHale and a host of talented artists and performers created an animated mini-series called Over The Garden Wall exploring life, death, and everything in the unknown autumnal expanse in between. To help celebrate that groundbreaking show, Michelle and I designed a fun Halloween card for our Patreon supporters inspired by that cartoon.
Do Parents Still Hand Out Rocks On Halloween?
When I was a kid, half the houses on my block gave out rocks on Halloween instead of candy. Especially if your costume wasn’t up to neighborhood standards. By the time the last porch light was extinguished, we’d be making our way home in the dark, our masks half on and half off, dragging a heavy bag of rubble behind us. And we were happy to have those rocks. Thrilled, even. Sometimes, if you were lucky, some of the houses in the nicer neighborhoods would hand out full-size quartz! You can’t find those just lying around in the street. Charlie Brown can whine all he wants about his Halloween haul, but I’ve never heard of rocks giving anyone cavities or a tummy ache.
Mailbox Monsters
When I was a child, there were certain cultural touchstones associated with Halloween that I considered sacrosanct; jack-o-lanterns, trick-or-treating, and halloween specials. Most people agree on those. But there’s one arcane practice that most folks have relegated to the past, one that I have always genuinely looked forward to at this time of year: sending and receiving Halloween cards in the mail.
Forget It, Vince. It’s Halloweentown.
Back in the 1990s, before DisneyPlus was streaming endless content into people’s homes, folks looking for family entertainment from the House of the Mouse would have to rely on The Disney Channel Original Movies. One of the more popular films from this era was 1998’s Halloweentown. It starred Debbie Reynolds as an old school witch who lived in a bustling village of monsters, spooks, and other oddballs. This week, Michelle and I did some research on this magical town, and sculpted a diorama of one of its oddballs.
Revisiting Lady In White with a Frankie Scarlatti Sculpture
If you’ve been following this blog and our YouTube channel (sincere thanks to all nine of you) then you might have caught on to the fact that Frank LaLoggia’s Lady In White is one of my favorite Halloween movies. We’ve done an ink and watercolor illustration of the movie’s protagonist, Frankie Scarlatti. But this week we decided to enter the third dimension and sculpt Frankie in polymer clay.
Mary Blair Haunted My Mansion
Admittedly, “mansion” is a monstrous overstatement when discussing my dank, spider-infested, subterranean art studio, but I needed a hook for the title. Speaking of notable titles, a book we brought into the studio the other day — Magic Color Flair: The World of Mary Blair — is something Michelle and I pored over for an hour, becoming more enchanted with every turned page, only stopping when the webs being spun around our immobile forms indicated we were in danger of being exsanguinated.
Journey with Ichabod Crane through this Sleepy Hollow Poster
Ichabod Crane, the itinerant schoolmaster who ran afoul of the Headless Horseman, is journeying once again through the Hudson Valley. And now that I’ve finally finished my latest passion project, you can join him as he ventures into and through Sleepy Hollow in my new story poster.
Good Graveyard Fences Make Good Neighbors
Two years ago I put together my first miniature haunted house. It’s a little wonky, and in need of repair, but most haunted houses are. This October, in an effort to improve curb appeal, Michelle and I built a miniature cemetery on the plot next door, and we experimented with making the headstones out of foam, wood, clay, and cardboard.
Handmade Halloween
I’ve got a top five for the Halloween season and it’s remained unchanged for most of my life. Trick or treating, scary stories, pumpkin farms, haunted houses, and Halloween cards. I think the practice of sending Halloween cards might’ve fallen off in recent years, but I’m an old-school holdout. And while store-bought is just fine, I get a kick out of making my own.
Ding Dong, It’s The Dearly Departed
One of the more recent illustrations I’ve posted to the gallery since redesigning the site is this Trick or Treat image of a boy spending Halloween with his ghostly friend.
Making A Monkey Out Of Me
This week on our YouTube channel, we made Ben Cooper-style Planet of the Apes masks (and accompanying window boxes). We don’t have a vacuum forming machine, so we sculpted them out of papier mache and foam clay.