Painted for a competition. My initial idea for the dark rider theme was to do something along the lines of Frank Frazetta's iconic 'Death Dealer' painting. I liked the idea of including a Halloween style jack-o'-lantern, which I thought would add a nice point of contrast to all the "darkness", while still fitting with the nightmare theme. So I decided to make my dark rider less medieval and more Sleepy Hollowesque in order to incorporate that idea.