The Haunting

As a creative one of my favorite "holidays" has long been Halloween. When I was about 13 or 14 - feeling a little to old for trick or treat - I began staging scenes on the porch of my parents home. The best memory was building two dummies and disquising myself as a third, when kids came to the door and knocked or rang the doorbell I would suddenly flinch to life and handout candy - it was diabolical fun!

This Sunday on the cover of The Fresno Bee Spotlight section I had the opportunity to experience some of that creative joy once again. The main feature, written by The Bee's Mike Osequeda, shares insights to some of the Valley's Halloween attractions - from corn mazes to pumpkin patches to haunted houses. Editor, Kathy Mahan wanted a cover design that would encapsulate the variety of creepy fun so, I began by gathering photo images from our archive
and offered up these soon to be rejected concepts.

The reason that these concepts were "killed" was that they were too specific and Kathy restated that she was looking for a drawing as opposed to something photographic. Here's a sketch for what would later be developed into the graphic presentation. The cover was completed in Adobe Illustrator and is only available in The Fresno Bee.

As always, let me know what you think and Happy Halloween!

~SWP