Black and Orange

Penelope has created a competition for Halloween. The theme: Black and Orange.
Here is my entry. I drew the girl and couple of weeks ago but wasn't sure what to do with her. After I finished last week illustration for "Ghost" I thought it would be great to join the two characters in this entry.
Not totally satisfied with it but at least I give it more surroundings and background!

Ghost

This speaks to me a bit more than the previous topic!

I drew this ghost while being stuck for ideas working on a yearbook (first freelance job). I know he looks like a skeleton but lets not kid ourselves, decomposition is our future.... brrrrrrrrr!
This was the perfect opportunity to try to further my skills with markers - actually I should probably say "to develop skills". I used normal paper as I like the colours to bleed into each other and used only gray markers.

As often I got a bit stuck with the background/context. Any suggestions ?...

I willl probably try to improve it but quite like the look of him - he was killed in a saloon in the Far West and comes back to hunt all the drunken fools he finds on his path... mmmm could be the inspiration I was lacking to put him in context. I might work on the drunken fools! Still open for suggestions though...

Smitten

Ok! First problem: don't know what it means!
I had to go through the dictionary. At first I couldn't find it as you have to look under smite. Tell me if I start boring you... So next step, writing down all the definitions. Many choices... arghhhh... I decided to stay with the most obvious meaning (don't want to misintepret!).
Love hearts are not usually one of my themes (not exactly the romantic type...) but I deciced to give it a shot.
This time I brought my drawing into illustrator. I am not happy with the result but don't have anymore time to play around with it. I will try to improve it later and will post the result if it's any better!
It looks like a pattern is emerging... I'm unhappy/uninspired with/by the topic every second week!

Trouble

Trouble... that's the name I use to give my husband when we first met!... Couldn't really draw a picture of him though.
Decided that trouble would be as in "everyday domestic trouble", nothing too dramatic. This must have happened to me a hundred times. Trying to pile up as much as possible to do things fast and ending up with broken glass and a lot more to tidy up. First tried to render the drawing in colour pencil but still not very good at it, so reverted to photoshop. Also been wanting to do duo tone illustration for a while. I think this works even though I must admit I have tried many many colour combinations before getting to this near monochromatic render.

Quiet

I wasn't very inspired by this week's topic. Not a good sign, it's only week two for me!!
Decided that QUIET would be as in "quiet afternoon" and used a picture I took in Vanuatu as my inspiration. This is hand drawn and then slightly modified in photoshop.