Inspiration Station: Chaz Addams

“It was a dark and stormy morning…”

That’s the weather I’ve been dealt in mid-winter, Ohio, and when it looks dank and dreary outside, what’s a girl to do but go find some devlishly macabre and delightful gothish whimsy illustrations?

Enter Chaz Addams.  Yes, those Addams — The creator of the Addams family of TV and Broadway Musical Fame.  Charles Addams was a wonderful illustrator (January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988) whose legacy lives on.

A Google search for his works gives a multitude of images, most of which I can’t post due to copyright laws.  However, you can click here to go to an online gallery of his print works, and BELIEVE me, it is well worth the click.

Addams reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and illustrative style I really love.  It’s free. It’s loose.  It’s whimsy.  It’s muted, yet colorful.  (Yes, black and white can be colorful. It’s all about hue intensity.)  And it’s inspired me to do some gothish whimsy doodling of my own.  Enjoy!

Created in QvikSketch on iPad with Nomad Brush.

I am a Maker of Things.

I read in a book once a passage that goes like this:

“Ever since she was a little girl, she’d had a compulsion to make things:
Paintings, poems, mittens, kites.
She had a deep love of creation, of watching a blank canvas take on color and form,
a length of yarn twist and knot into a knitted cap.
When she went to the sea, she made sandcastles. 
When she was housebound by a snowstorm, she made snowmen. 
When the wind whipped her hair across her face, she made kites. 
She didn’t think of herself as an artist or craftswoman.
She simply considered herself a maker of things.”

And I have never, ever found another phrasing that quite fit how I feel about who I am and what it is I do.  Thanks, Janet Evanovich, for such wonderful words.

“Eye of the Beholder” – Created in ASketch on iPad.

Cranial Explosion

… is how i feel today.

Oh my.  Where to start with this week?  As usual, being in the midst of a full time job, a graduate school program (where I had to brilliant idea to take 9 credit hours this semester), teaching 2 art classes 2 nights a week, taking a 13-week money management course, singing on the church praise team, and finding time for my cats, friends, family—

Well, I could just say how stressed I am, but artist I am, I painted instead:

(Created in ArtRage on iPad with Nomad brush: “It’s Not Just A Headache.”)