Month of Love and Fear Recap

Since my last pre-resurrection post was about my Month of Love pieces, I thought I would show off my contributions to the challenge since then. In February 2022, I was one of the offical artists in the last officially prompt-listed event, then co-led by the wonderful Jenna Kass.

In 2019, the Month of Love (February) had the same subjects as Month of Fear (October) in 2018, which was a very interesting way of looking at the same ideas from two sides. The themes were beauty, blindness, tears, truth, and lies. Lies turned out to be one of my most liked images to date with the rats trying to cheer up a child living in poverty.

Month of Fear 2019 dealt with monsters: monster within, without, above, below, and monsters unseen. I managed to create three out of five with traditional media. I had picked up acrylic pouring that summer and used it for the Cthuloid interpretation of Monsters Below, and collage and mixed media for the unseen monsters. I was most proud of the Monster Within image with the grotesque quilt of creepy creatures making up the figure, inspired by more skilled artists' work like Allen Williams and Jim Pavelec.

In 2020, I didn't manage to participate in Month of Love. My Month of Fear contributions for the themes trick, night, supernatural, costume, and treat saw four out of five painted traditionally in small format on board or wood panel. Supernatural uses collage of glow-in-the-dark plastic filament squirted with one of those crazy 3D print pens I was given as a gift (it was also not offically listed in the challenge because I mistakenly ignored the rule of using only one image in the tumblr posts, and I just had to show off the glow effect).

In 2021, I managed four images for the themes embrace, rift, silence, and song. The mixed media, paper on board piece for silence is my favourite from the lot. At the time, we had been in the pandemic for a while, but I personally never really suffered under the proverbial silence and tried to offer a more positive view on the matter.

And that was the last we heard from the challenge initiated by Kristina Carroll. I always liked the timeframe and themes and have been meaning to do something like it on my own, but I find giving rules to myself a little arbitrary, even if I occasionally make sets of images (I wouldn't really call them series).