Charlottetown Moon - original upcycled vintage painting

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”
—Lord Vader

This was a challenging alteration... I've never illustrated on an engraving before! 

An engraving is when the artist carves into a piece of wood or metal, and then creates prints from that carving. There is no "original art" anywhere of this illustration... the stamp / carving itself is both the art and the tool with which the finished print artwork is created. The artist then prints a limited run from the engraving and each one is unique in its imperfections with how the ink was applied. When you look closely, you can see there are no "dots" as you would see in printing today... just smooth, fine black lines of where the ink pressed onto the paper. 

I wanted to alter this engraving as close to the style of the original artist as possible... which meant using a very fine pen, and applying ink in horizontal lines mimicking the engraving. I used a little paint to pull back highlights where I got carried away with the detail.

It was a fun experiment trying a new style, and I'm very happy with the overall steampunk look of the "Moon" ominously peering over Charlottetown. 

Note : the Before picture turned out kind of hilarious... my camera couldn't focus on the fine lines and made it all wavy! So it didn't look like "that," but you can see there was no moon in the sky before, lol!

The original engraving print was collected locally in Ontario. The print was attached firmly to its matte, which is a little faded but in otherwise great condition... rather than peel off the print, I've left it attached to the original matte, as

"Charlottetown Moon"
altered painting by Heather Castles

25.5 x 18.5 cm (7.5 x 10 inch) vintage engraving print on paper

28 x 24.5 cm (11 x 13.5 inch) vintage frame