A little topical sketch in honour of the ghosts, ghouls and other diaphanous (but not all, necessarily, malign…) beings traditionally abroad this evening. Or, more accurately, in recognition of the hoards of unconvincingly-costumed children roaming the cul-de-sacs and avenues of suburbia after dark – moulded-plastic pumpkin-shaped sweet-carrying receptacles in hand – hoping for a limited-’spooky’ (puhlease…!)-edition Mr Kipling cake bar (if we’re to believe the packaging – of said cakes, that is, not children…). Or (who am I kidding…?!) cold, hard cash.
A Dracula pretender attempting to spook an emphatically unconvinced feline. (Entirely unsuccessfully, as I’m sure you can deduce.)
Cheap – and unusually smudgy – HB pencil on textured paper, with orange pastel highlight.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t regard them as worthy of mention (last year’s callers were suspiciously teenager-shaped, entirely lacking in endearing child-dressed-as-inept-ghoul charms, and laboured under the seriously mistaken impression that a Poundworld ’Scream’ mask constituted a Hallowe’en costume. That, and they were already laden with several Tesco carrier bags of pilfered/terrifiedly-surrendered confectionary from their evening’s ‘work’…), but the weather’s going to be filthy tonight, so I do grudgingly salute the stoicism of the ones that do venture out.
(P.S. Apologies for the crumby post title – perhaps there’s a place for me on the headline-creating team of the local free paper…)
P.P.S. Having entirely failed to post the link to last week’s Illustration Friday offering, it’s really quite amazing that I’ve almost succeeded in committing the exact same catastrophic omission this week – herewith, then, due notice of my (rather hasty) illustrative response to the current week’s topic, haunt.
Wonderful style! I’m sure I’ve asked before but do you use a kneaded eraser a lot? I seem to be reading about this need for the kneaded eraser. (I have several Staedtler something-or-other rectangular white erasers, can’t tell what kind as I’ve pulled off the labels.) Love the little tie on the cape and the cute cat!
Thanks, Cindy! To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure what a ‘kneaded eraser’ is (is it something similar to a putty eraser?). I have to say that Staedtler is my preferred choice – the Mars Plastic Eraser – as I find it the least likely to cause nasty, graphite smears and soft enough to avoid grating the top layer off a sheet of paper! They are rectangular white numbers, too, so it sounds as though you use something similar already… X
Cute! Love the expression of the cat’s face!
Thank you!