RAVEN AND SKULL

I finally finished my Raven and Skull bag. It's one of what I call my book reports, which is to say I read a book and then after mulling it over for a bit, I design a piece of beadwork about the story. The book in this case is " A Raven Named Grip" by Marilyn Singer. The story goes that Charles Dickens had a raven ( actually several ), Grip who could speak. He made him a character in his book "Barnaby Rudge". When Dickens went to America from England he met with Edgar Allen Poe who had read the book and Poe saw a portrait of his children with Grip that Dickens carried. This stuck with Poe and later he was inspired to write the poem " The Raven". So in this piece of beadwork I was trying to capture a mood, a bit victorian, a bit spooky.  The challenge with this piece was all the black. I had to put the leaves behind the raven beak to keep all the dark colors from running together. Ofcourse, ravens and skulls are some of my favorite subject matters and I do love to combined them with bright red roses.