Halloween Witch
Halloween Witch by American Painter Gil Elvgren (1914 – 1980); pin-up girl and advertising artist, and illustrator.
Halloween Witch is an amusing portrait of a beautiful young lady dressed up in a Halloween costume composed of an orange witches hat with black embossed stars and a black cat, that she is holding with her right hand to keep it from falling off.
The Halloween Witch costume is a black lingerie outfit comprising a corset and a long flowing skirt with an additional sheer mesh shawl that is wrapped around her arms along her back.
To finish off the Halloween outfit she is also wearing black mesh lace stockings that are held in place by a black garter belt and high heel black leather shoes that are curled upwards at the front.
Finally the Halloween Witch is sitting on a broom stick, with her left hand holding on to the top of the broom stick; which is supported on both ends by very thin rope as she swings in front of a very large yellow moon, set against a rich royal blue sky.
Halloween Witch is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image.
Info Below Derived From Wikipedia.org
Gillette A. Elvgren was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended University High School. After graduation, he began studying art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
He later moved to Chicago to study at the American Academy of Art, and graduated from the Academy during the great depression, at the age of twenty-two.
After graduation Elvgren joined the stable of artists at Stevens and Gross, Chicago’s most prestigious advertising agency, and became a protégé of the artist Haddon Sundblom.
In 1937, Gil began painting calendar pin-ups for Louis F. Dow, one of America’s leading publishing companies, during which time he created about 60 pin-up girl works on 22″ × 28″ canvas and distinguished them by a printed signature.
Many of his pin-ups were reproduced as nose art on military aircraft during World War II; and it was around this time in 1944, that Elvgren was approached by the Brown and Bigelow Publishing Company; a firm that still dominates the field in producing calendars, advertising specialties and promotional merchandise.
The next year from 1945 until 1972, Elvgren was associated with the Brown & Bigelow publishing company, and began working with 24 inch by 30 inch canvases, a format that he would use for the next 30 years, and signed his work in cursive.
Elvgren was a commercial success. He lived in various locations, and was active from the 1930s to the 1970s. In 1951 he began painting in a studio in his home, then in Winnetka, Illinois, using an assistant to set up lighting, build props and scenes, photograph sets, and prepare his paints.
His clients included well known companies like Brown and Bigelow, Coca-Cola, General Electric and the Sealy Mattress Company, to name a few. In addition, during the 1940s and 1950s he illustrated stories for a host of magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping.
Among the models and hollywood legends Elvgren painted during his career included Myrna Hansen, Donna Reed, Barbara Hale, Arlene Dahl, Lola Albright and Kim Novak.
