Just a Little Nibble Won't Hurt...

"Just A Little Nibble Won't Hurt..." - digital by Greg Newbold

I finished my scary version of this piece a little too late for Halloween last year, so it had to wait. I had originally done this as a poster for for the depressingly alcoholic stage play"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", which is scary for completely different reasons.

I just couldn't resist the allure of a gaping mouth and it called to me to turn it into a vampire. Next step is to combine the two into a gif or animation of some sort, but I haven't taken the time to figure out how that works just yet. Maybe next year! In the meantime, have a fun Halloween and stay safe!

Happy Halloween!

Every year we are invited to a themed Halloween party that is put on by friends. Some years result in elaborate costumes that include props. As we were digging through our decorations this year, I found the "Wilson" that I had made for a "haunted island" theme party a few years back.

I'm not sure why I thought Castaway was a scary movie except that it is. From the plane crash (still one of the scariest crash scenes ever) to the nightmare of being alone on a deserted island to fend for your self against the elements, hunger and creeping insanity is about as scary anything I can imagine.

Plus it included one of the most interesting supporting actors ever played by a beat up volleyball. The one sided conversations that Tom Hanks' character has with Wilson gave him such a personality that I was literally sad when Wilson floated away.

I had my Fedex box with the angel all scuffed up too, which has long since been recycled, but I held on to Wilson. I struggled to age the plastic I found when cutting open what I thought was a leather ball and the red handprint was a little too red, but in retrospect, I still like it. Have a safe Halloween everyone, especially my East Coast friends recovering from Hurricane Sandy!

Have a Scary Halloween!

Clown-Fish; 5" x 5" acrylic on paper, by Greg Newbold

Here's another one of my goofy fish that I finished just yesterday. It seemed appropriate for Halloween. This one is a little creepier than usual, but still pretty funny. It's getting shipped off to a fundraiser for the Westmont Museum of Fine Art in Santa Barbara, California. Everyone was given a 5" x 5" piece of BFK paper to do anything they wanted on. My friend Scott Anderson teaches art there and when I saw his contribution, I was a little embarrassed by my previous effort. It was a fun drawing, but not typical of my painted work. I asked for another shot and this is what came out of it. I did it as a demo for my Illustration 1 class at BYU. I have seen a few on the pieces for this show posted online and I think a few people are going to end up getting some little gems. I'm tempted to bid myself.

Worms For Halloween Dinner

Plate-o-Worms

So yesterday for Halloween dinner we made mini mummy pizzas (little mummy heads with pepperoni, olives for the eyes, and all swathed in mozzarella string cheese bandages on English muffin halves, but the best part was making and eating the Jell-O "blood worms". After seeing this on TV last week, we had to make it. They were just too gross to resist. Take a 6 ounce box of raspberry Jell-O and a box of bendy straws and presto! You have a pile of slimy, surprisingly realistic looking, completely edible nightcrawlers. Even though they taste just like raspberry Jell-O, our youngest had a hard time stomaching the idea.  I, as you can see, had no problem with them.

Mmm-Yummy!

Maybe because I like Halloween but also because of all the years as a kid when we would catch nightcrawlers and sell to fishermen. My grandmother's lawn was watered by flood irrigation and on those nights we would grab the flashlights and go down after dark to match withs with the earthworms. Stealth was the word of the day or you ended up with a handful of grass and mud. I got pretty adept at snagging those things before they could slink back into the ground. Some nights we would catch as many as 100 dozen of the mucous covered Oligochaetae. Our buckets of slippery critters then went in a below ground screen bottomed box full of peat moss where they would live happily munching on cornmeal until they were sold to fishermen.It was a tough way to make a few bucks, but we always knew where the worms were when we wanted to go fishing.

Recipe for Jell-O Blood Worms