Halloween Plates

For the past few years I have been subscribing to Betty Boomerang, a retro-inspired subscription box service. This particular service is bi-montly and each box features a different theme like Palm Springs, Camping or Tiki. Each box also features a spotlight artist who contributes a design, illustration or product for the box.

The Palm Springs-themed Betty Boomerang Box and one of my favorites

Betty Boomerang’s “The Great Outdoors” box

Betty Boomerang’s “Totally Tiki” box

This past July I was contacted by Betty Boomerang to be a Spotlight artist for their upcoming Halloween-themed box. I haven’t done many Halloween illustrations so I jumped at the chance to try something new. I was given free range to do any subject I wanted and after some discussion it was decided that a trick-or-treat illustration in a mid-century retro style would be just the thing. I looked at a number of vintage halloween illustrations and products as inspiration and felt that a limited color palette would work with the vintage halloween theme.

Some of the vintage halloween inspiration for my illustration:

I created a number of different pencil sketches of kids in different costumes and once I figured out the general layout started creating the final illustration.

One of my trick-or-treaters that didn’t quite make the cut.

Some cat doodles

Final Sketch

The final illustration was created in Adobe Illustrator using a limited color palette of orange and black. My Illustration was a nod to the mid-century style using simpler shapes and with limited patterns and textures.

At the start of the process I wasn’t sure what product the illustration would be printed on, so I had to keep the proportions of the illustration neutral enough and kept the background white so that it could be placed on most products and materials. Doing this illustration in Adobe Illustrator also meant that it could be easily sized up or down as needed.

My illustration was printed on white melamine plates and was accompanied by vintage reproduction halloween decoration, napkins and retro candy as part of the “Something Wicked” Betty Boomerang box. It’s always exciting to see your work on an actual product and it’s inspired me to try and do more illustrations with product design in mind. It was a really fun and different illustration for me to do and I loved creating it.

Plates are currently available for sale in sets of four at BettyBoomerang.com.

The Betty Boomerang “Something Wicked” box featuring my illustration.

A close-up of one of the plates