The 2012 Halloween Art Challenge

Last year's art challenge was such good fun I thought we'd have another go this year. If you didn't see last year's entries, you can see them all here plus a spooky slideshow that my friends Steve Hills and Terry Bergin put together.

This year the theme is Your Worst Nightmare. What I want from you is a piece of artwork that shows me what scares you the most; it can be a drawing, a painting, a sculpture, a collage, photograph ... anything that explains your deepest fears. Clowns ... spiders ... crazed axemen ... Bruce Forsyth naked ... whatever your worst fear is, show it to the world.

As usual there will be postcard doodles - a subject of your choice drawn by me - for everyone who enters. And there will be a prize for my favourite - I've doodled this weird A3-sized Dracula-like thing and put it in a tacky plastic frame I found down the charity shop:

Sorry - it was really hard to get a good photo behind that shiny plastic.

Anyway, send your pics to me by email: stevyncolgan@mac.com or via Twitter - I'm @stevyncolgan and make sure you add the hashtag #halloweenartchallenge

Closing date is Midnight GMT on Tuesday 30th October.

Freak out and get creative!

Image (c) Stevyn Colgan

Glass Half Full of Fun (and Spam)

If you think that glass - and glass beads in particular - are a bit dull then you haven't visited Aardvark Art Glass's website. I mean, look:

 

 

 

The website has artwork by a number of contributors and some pretty weird stuff besides. I mean ... sculptures made from Spam?

 

 

 

My favourite has to be: 'Transporter Malfunction' or 'James Doohan's True Final Wishes'.

 

 

A great fun site to look around.

 

Makes me think it's about time for another Art Challenge like this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and  this one ...

 

Thanks to Mo McFarland who directed me to Aardvark's site.

The Creepy Portrait Art Challenge - The Results

So here they are ... the weird and the wonderful, the insane and the unhinged; the fantastic photos that were submitted to me for the Creepy Portrait Art Challenge. As you know, I wanted at least 12 separate eccentric family portraits for a book project I'm currently working on. Sadly, there were very few submissions but those I did get in were SUPERB, as you'll see. I intend to use them all. We kick off with this slice of scary pie from Andy Kerr:

Then we have this from Cheryl Lancaster:

An uncomfortable portrait by Phillip Groombridge:

And Rob (@gigerpunk) sent me this image of manly splendour:

Finally, a veritable cornucopia of mad images from the damaged minds of Mo McFarland and Caroline V (@amberprophet):

They really are brilliant, every single one. And deeply disturbing for all the right reasons. Thank you people. Magnificent effort all round.

One final dollop of Creepy Inspiration

A few more weird and occasionally inexplicable old photos from my collection to spur you on to great things:

Get snapping!

Final Call for the Creepy Portrait Art Challenge

Just two days to go in my final (for some time anyway) art challenge. For this one, I've asked people to create a surreal or downright creepy postcard of the kind that seemed to proliferate around Halloween and Christmas in the days when black and white photography was the norm. Among the genuine examples I've found online are gems like these:

I've had some amazing submissions so far and will post them all on December 1st. All you need to do is send me the photo - I can do the ageing and distressing etc. No prizes on offer this time except that I'm 2/3rds of the way through writing a comic novel that requires photos of mad and eccentric relatives throughout. This seemed the perfect way to get those portraits and for people to see their name in a book as one of the contributors.

So there you go. You have until Midnight on the 30th. Get snapping!

365 Doodles - Day 312

A quick scary self-portrait I knocked up in the wee hours of this morning using a free art program I got with a computer magazine (Paintshop Pro 6). It involves a photo of me, a shriner fez, some 3D glasses, a ping pong ball, a photo of some woods and some free texture layers pulled off the internet. Less than an hour later - voila! Click to see a bigger version (as if you'd want to).

But don't be put off if you're not a digital photoshoppy sort of person. Remember that the postcards I want you to emulate were taken on old film cameras, some a century before computers came into our homes. It's all about the atmosphere, the clothes, the facial expression and, above all else, the sheer incongruity of some of the compositions. It's bizarre I'm after - the creepy comes as the natural consequence of getting the right level of weird. Most of those old photographs weren't taken to be funny.

And remember ... if you can't do the ageing/distressing/sepia-tone stuff yourself, I can. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

The Creepy Portrait Art Challenge - More inspiration needed?

Some more very odd postcards. Just to give you more of a flavour of what I'm after. I'm sure you can do creepier ...