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.

His ghost friend is a character from my book, Wish On A Halloween Moon. I did this because I have an addiction to half-baked cross-promotion and there’s no known cure.

But working on these illustrations always brings me back to those Halloweens of my childhood that seemed somehow magical. They were more than just a night to dress up and get candy. At the time, it really did feel like you could turn down any given, dimly-lit neighborhood street and you might just run into a ghost (or some other type of monster).

I never grew out of hoping to meet friendly monsters. To this day, on late night walks, I still feel a little of that magic. So far, though, I’ve mostly run across friendly cats lounging on their front stoops. If they’re secretly monsters, they’re not letting on. But I suppose that was the inspiration for this illustration. And this week on our Long Lost Friend YouTube channel, Michelle and I go through the steps I took to create this image digitally.

I talk a little about the different stages of my process, setting up the composition, and working out color. We also talk about a Halloween memory from my childhood that has clearly scarred me for life.

If you’d like to follow along with my process, here’s the video: