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| The Haunted House by artist Kim Testone, age 8, winner of the 3rd grade monthly coloring contest. |
As a kid, I took Halloween very seriously. I never used those plastic store-bought costumes. Either my mom made them, or starting in about mid-elementary school, I started making them myself. In our small town, Halloween was celebrated the Saturday before Halloween, starting with a parade down the middle of town, past a panel of judges, then into the firehouse for a cookie, an orange drink and a fifty-cent piece, then trick-or-treating, all in a pretty orderly fashion.
Yes, trick-or-treating in the middle of the afternoon, on a Saturday. My husband always thinks this is quite weird, but I think it was really a wonderful childhood memory. Everyone would walk in pretty similar pathways, with neighbors often sitting on their porches to make things easier. Some elderly neighbors would even set up fun things like custom cookie-decorating tables (remember, these were people we knew, and it was a very different time).
I think what I liked best about this whole event is that, in the daylight, your costumes could be seen, and so that made me want to make the best and most impressive-looking costume I could. I may share some of these creations in a future post, but for now, let's get back to the coloring contest.
In third grade, every month our teachers held a collective grade-wide coloring contest. I don't quite remember if there were two or three classrooms, but I think the number "12" in the upper right corner of my coloring above may have represented my student number for the anonymous entries. My guess is there was somewhere around 60 or 70 students.
At this point in my life, I already very much considered myself an artist, and so when the first September coloring contest came about, I remember being quite disappointed that I didn't win. But the October contest, well, I was quite excited to see it was a Halloween piece, and I knew exactly what to do.
If I recall correctly, the students actually took the pieces home to color, rather than doing it in the classroom. Now, although I preferred my daytime Halloween trick-or-treating, I'd seen "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" often enough to know that most people associated Halloween with the night, so naturally I made this a nighttime piece.
In looking at the piece, there are a few things I think are important to note. First, I ADDED the stars in the sky, desperately trying to draw the sky and essentially leave blank space to be the stars. Maybe not perfect, but it did give the right effect. I also left a negative space around the tree branches in much the same way, to give the effect that they were glowing in the moonlight instead of being lost in the dark sky. Second, I ADDED that frame to make it look wooden. I think there may have been four corner lines to represent the corners of the frame, but nothing else. I remember thinking, it should look like the frames in my house, so I added the lines for the grooves of the wooden textures. Third, I used two different mediums - markers for the bushes, sky and the black area on the roof, probably because it gave the color intensity I wanted for those areas, and crayons for everything else.
When I brought the piece to school, I was quite proud, but when the teachers hung them all up in a line for judging, I remember being shocked to see that no one else had made the piece like mine. There may have been a nighttime scene here or there, but they featured solid black or blue skies, and certainly no faux wooden frames. I remember still very much liking my piece, but wondering if I had done it wrong, since mine was quite different from everyone else's.
But I won, with the prize being that your picture got laminated and hung in the window of the classroom for the rest of the school to see. It was the first art contest I'd ever won, and I'm so glad I kept the piece.
It's significant to me for a few reasons. First, I think it's important to trust your gut and make what feels right to you, drawing on everything you find interesting and inspiring, to create something that you, the artist, wants to see. Don't worry about what you think other people want to see; trust yourself first. Second, even when your work is out in the world, don't worry about comparing it to what other people make; just be yourself, and keep making work and refining your vision.
Happy Halloween Season! Thanks for stopping by!
