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For those of you unfamiliar with the legend of Stingy Jack, and thus why the pumpkin-themed patch (technically, a jack-o-lantern) in the Hallows Angels patch set was named "Stingy Jacks", I thought I'd go into some history on the legend of Stingy Jack, the origins of the jack-o-lantern, how it all relates to Halloween/Samhain, and also share some development sketches for the "Stingy Jacks" patch artwork.
As with most of the origins of Halloween symbolism, the traditions stem from the Irish and Scottish, and from the Celts before them. In the previous backer update, I went into the Celtic concept of the Wheel Of The Year, Cross-Quarter Days and why Halloween is also known as Samhain.
The short version of the Stingy Jack legend is that he was a drunkard and a conniver, who on multiple occasions had outwitted the Devil who had come to take his soul on several occasions. When he finally did die, Heaven rejected him due to his sinful ways, and the deal Jack made with the Devil prevented him from even being able to enter Hades.
The Devil gave Jack and ember from Hell, and he placed it in a hollowed-out turnip which lit his way as he navigated the netherworld in-between this world and the next.
This made him now known as "Jack of the Lantern", otherwise abbreviated to "Jack o' lantern".
So if the original tale (and the original carved effigies) were turnips, how did jack o'lanterns come to be associated with pumpkins?
Most likely, when Irish immigrants came to America in the 1800s they brought their traditions with them and found the pumpkin — native to North America — a far superior food item for hollowing out and carving than the turnip.
Pumpkins are technically fruits, but the way.
"The term jack-o'-lantern was originally used to describe the visual phenomenon ignis fatuus (literally, "foolish fire") known as a will-o'-the-wisp in English folklore. Used especially in East England, its earliest known use dates to the 1660s.
The term "will-o'-the-wisp" uses "wisp" (a bundle of sticks or paper sometimes used as a torch) and the proper name "Will": thus, "Will-of-the-torch." The term jack-o'-lantern is of the same construction: "Jack of [the] lantern."" —via Wikipedia
It seems the legend was built around the experiences of these spooky bog lights, and the jack o' lantern somehow became a talisman or symbol of this story. I couldn't find any information as to whether the ignis fatuus has any specific association with Autumn or October.
However, it seems that the Celtic festival of Samhain (which we now know as Halloween) was seen as a time when supernatural beings (the Aos Sí), and the souls of the dead, roamed the earth. Perhaps these ghostly lights were perceived as the lanterns of these lost souls.
The Aos Si (literally, "people of the mounds") were also known as the "Fairy Folk", who lived in an invisible parallel universe that coexists with the one we inhabit. Samhain/Halloween was a time where the separating boundary between these two existences somehow became less restrictive…
I suspect the experiences of the ignis fatuus tended to occur around October, thus drawing an association in the mounds of the ancient Celts.
So there's the background to why the pumpkin patch in this set was named the "Stingy Jacks".
When the concept for the Halloween-themed, biker-style patch concept came to me, the club name "Stingy Jacks" leapt to mind (with Skeleton Crew a close second).
It sounded somewhat like a biker gang name, the lore behind the name was a geeky Halloween connection, and it just sounds cool!
The initial sketch for the Stingy Jacks patch pretty much became the final art. It was the first sketch I made, and the style in which I did the dark shading so the glowing face really stood out was proof-of-concept for me that this set could work with just the limited palette of orange, black and white.
I knew regardless of the rest of the set, all of them needed to used a limited color palette of black, orange and white.
The rest of the patch designs followed suit from the Stingy Jacks concept art. I shared the development process of the Hallows Angels patch art in detail with the backers over at my Patreon campaign (starts at just $2 per month). I'll be sharing more development art here in backer updates, but for the in-depth look at it all with exclusive sketches and extensive artist essays on the process, head over to Patreon.
I'm going to dig into the origin of the word "Halloween" in the next update. That should shed some light on the name of this patch set, "Hallows Angels".
George
One of the additional patches in the "Hallows Angels" patch set is the scarecrow-themed "Sons Of Samhain". But what, you may be asking, is Samhain?
Paraphrasing Wikipedia, Samhain is the name of a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year (shorter days). Loosely translated, it means "summer's end".
Pronounced "sah-when", Samhain is one of four "cross-quarter days" on the calendar, dates which mark the midpoints between an Equinox and a Solstice point. Samhain/Halloween marks the halfway point between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice.
I stumbled upon the Celtic concept of Cross-Quarter Days (or the "Wheel of the Year") when discovering that my February 2nd birthday was a holiday of sorts — “Candlemas” to the Christian religion and “Imbolc” to the Celts.
(Technically, Samhain (as far as being a cross-quarter day) occurs around November 7th in the Northern Hemisphere these days. Check out this page for more in-depth info. )
In short, the ancients saw the Solstices and Equinoxes as fulcrums of a season, not boundaries. Boundary dates were instead these Cross-Quarter Days:
“Unlike modern calendars that define the start of a season on a Solstice or Equinox, the Celts perceived Solstices and Equinoxes as events occuring mid-season, with the seasons actually beginning and ending on the Cross Quarters. Thus, Imbolc was the beginning of Spring. Imbolc corresponds more or less to Groundhog Day in the USA, February 2…”
“Perhaps the Celtic perception of the seasonal calendar harmonizes best with nature. Should Summer’s arrival really mark a time of year when daytime just gets shorter and shorter? Is it logical for days to only lengthen throughout Winter? It seems to contradict our perception of what these seasons are, or is it just a mid-Summer’s night dream of mine? The Celts believed major transitional days — Solstices and Equinoxes — should be enveloped by the time of year they signify, not stand for mere boundary markers! Celtic calendar keepers favored the Cross Quarters as bookends for every season under the sun.” —via archaeoastronomy.com
Halloween/Samhain thus holds a different significance when viewed from this perspective. Being the beginning of the Winter season, the focus on the dead, spirits and such makes more sense. Winter is truly when the natural world seems to “die”, and this roughly begins around October 31 and begins to end around February 2.
This also ties into some other interesting research that came up as an offshoot of looking into these Cross-Quarter Days — the Ghosts of Christmas in the classic Scrooge tale in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. And you also hear mention of “scary ghost stories” in a popular Christmas song, and many Christmas songs are in minor keys (the spooky-sounding musical keys) which I always found a bit odd. It seems ghost stories at Christmas is a tradition that has long fell out of use, and this was the case at Dickens’ time as well — it seems he was attempting to revive the custom. As perhaps was the BBC with their yearly broadcast of ghost stories at Christmas. And this might help explain the concept of Krampus, the demon companion to Santa/St. Nick!
When seen from the perspective that Samhain/Halloween, Christmas and Imbolc/Candlemas/Grounghog’s Day all form the season “Winter”, it makes sense to have the first half — from Halloween to Christmas — be focused on the “darker” aspects (since the length of daylight wanes to it’s nadir at the Winter Solstice), and then the latter half from Christmas (or "Yule") to Imbolc/Groundhog's Day signifying the “rebirth” and life-affirming aspects, since the length of days have begun once again to lengthen after the Winter Solstice. An ideal time to demarcate a New Year.
I wouldn’t doubt those clever Celts actually celebrated the start of the New Year on the day after the Winter Solstice. The day when the days start growing in daylight.
In short, Samhain is the end of Summer, the beginning of Winter, and the calendrical mid-point between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. The observance of this annual experience has come down to us in the form of the celebration of Halloween, the Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos), and many other curiously similar-themed observance days from around the world.
In future updates, I'll be digging into the origins of the word "Halloween", as well as share some interesting theories on perhaps why there is such a heavy focus on death and dying near October 31 by cultures and civilizations from around the world, as well as deep into the past…
The traditions of the Irish and Scottish play a big role in the symbology of Halloween, and I'll be digging into what the phrase "Stingy Jack" means, and how it ties into the Jack O' Lantern in the next backer update.
George
Many thanks for everyone who came out to pledge on launch day and helped to fund the campaign in about 8 hours! This set has been a real labor of love for me, as a lifelong (and until recently, long neglected) Halloween geek.
A great number of you are regular backers, and so an extra thanks to all of you for the ongoing support. Many of you have made my day with the wonderful compliments about the artwork for the new patch set. It's so awesome to see so many familiar names.
As regular backers know, with the funding taken care of so early, I can get the patch production underway starting this week. It takes a few weeks for the preproduction samples to get made, and I can start that now — at least for the core patches. I'm hoping we unlock a few more as stretch goals are met.
And with the Halloween-themed colors, this is going to be the easiest patch approval ever — I just have to pick the correct orange! But that's going to be one important orange…
I realized after I launched the campaign that I forgot to add the original art rewards to the page. Those are now added — five available 8"x10" original art rewards, which will include a color sketch card and the patch set will be one of the 31 limited edition patch sets for this campaign.
You can modify your existing pledge to upgrade to this reward by going to the top of the campaign page and clicking the "Manage my pledge" button.
I have been working since before the campaign launch on four additional patches for this set. In keeping with the classic Halloween iconography, the next four patches will feature scarecrows, bats, spiders and owls.
Backers over at my Patreon campaign have been pretty clear that they'd like to see the scarecrow patch ("Sons Of Samhain") get made as I've been sharing the initial development sketches of the stretch goal patch designs. The main campaign comments section is leaning towards the Sons Of Samhain as well — and the artwork hasn't even been revealed!
My plan is for all the stretch goals to be additional patches. I'd like to see all qualifying backers get all 8 designs as patches.
Usually I have at least a design or two ready to go at launch for the first stretch goal, but I was in a bit of a time pinch to get this campaign launched in time for Halloween, as well as ship all 286 rewards from the previous campaign before Hallows Angels launched. So I'll be finishing up these designs as the campaign progresses and share some progress with you along the way.
The stretch goals will be simple to work out: $1500 for each stretch goal. Which works out to:
We are only a couple of hundred dollars shy of the first stretch goal here on Day 3 of the campaign, so I think that one will likely be unlocked.
I'll be sharing some sketches of the art for the stretch goal patches in backer updates as it's refined. Or if you'd like to get access to the full detailed sketch development already in progress, become a patron over at my Patreon campaign for $2 or more.
I've already been asked the inevitable question about full-sized back patches from these designs. Here's the gist: back patch sized patches run about $50 each if ordering 10, and the pricing doesn't really drop again until you order 50, when they are $25 each. And that's just at cost.
So basically I would need to have at least 10 backers per design at $50 a patch ($500). And it would have to be the same patch design of course.
What I've done in the past for this kind of situation is set up a side-campaign over on the Tilt crowdfunding service. I can set up 4 campaigns, one for each of the 4 main designs (and can do so for stretch goal designs too of course).
If you're interested in the back patches, please sound off in the comments section below, and mention which design you'd be most interested in.
I never let a backer update go by without profusely thanking the backers. These kinds of projects are a collaboration — my creativity, and your pledges. Each successful campaign is one step closer to my goal of being a fully independent artist, so I can devote all my efforts on projects and merchandise like in this campaign.
My drawing table is literally overflowing with ideas, and the more time I am able to devote to them, the more of them I can create and share with you. Your support of these campaigns, my shop and my Patreon campaign make this possible.
I've got more cryptid patch sets planned (Mothman, Chupacabra, the Kraken), a legendary creatures patch set (mermaids, fairies and unicorns — don't worry, no rainbows involved!), a Krampus patch (maybe even a campaign this December!), as well as patch sets based on conspiracy theories, secret societies, ancient civilizations and other related topics.
And the Lovecraft-themed campaign is still in development…
I've also got a non-patch Halloween themed item that I'm considering for next October. More details to come on that and more in future email newsletters and over on my Patreon "virtual studio visit" campaign.
Thanks again!
George