BPB’s October Header Illustration: “Lucy” by Katy Horan

Anoth­er month, anoth­er new head­er image for Brown Paper Bag! I’m delight­ed to share with you Katy Horan’s gor­geous, haunt­ing illus­tra­tion that she calls Lucy. It’s based on the char­ac­ter  Lucy West­en­ra from the clas­sic sto­ry Drac­u­la by author Bram Stoker.

Per­fect for the spooky month of Octo­ber, right? As always, the work is for sale in the Brown Paper Bag shop as a 4″ x 6″ print — per­fect for fram­ing! Grab one before they’re all gone.

Name: Katy Horan
Loca­tion: Austin, Tx
Web­site: www.katyart.com
What was your dream job when you were 7 years old? Cos­tume Designer/ Veterinarian
Your pro­fes­sion now: artist / illustrator
What’s your favorite thing to draw? It’s prob­a­bly a tie between pret­ty dress­es and spooky ghosts
What was the inspi­ra­tion for this piece? I like to lis­ten to movie scores and was lis­ten­ing to the score from Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. It got me think­ing about the char­ac­ter of Lucy. I find her to be very beau­ti­ful and sad and I want­ed to do some­thing appro­pri­ate for Hal­loween, so I decid­ed to cre­ate my own inter­pre­ta­tion of Miss Lucy.
How did you cre­ate your illus­tra­tion? Was it any dif­fer­ent than your reg­u­lar process? I start­ed with a loose water­col­or under­paint­ing then added lay­ers of tis­sue paper and gouache on top and filled in the back­ground with black gouache. That is pret­ty much my stan­dard process, aside from the water­col­or. Usu­al­ly I just jump straight to the gouache.
Do you have a favorite scary movie or sto­ry? It would be impos­si­ble to pick one sin­gle favorite, so I will list the first few that come to mind: The Oth­ers (with Nicole Kid­man), The Shin­ing and any sto­ry out of the Scary Sto­ries to Tell In the Dark book series.

Thanks, Katy!