Anatomy of a Witch 🐈‍⬛🌙 Preview and Process [The Coven show] (Patreon)

Hello Patrons,

Here's the second painting for the Coven show at Gallery Nucleus !

They asked me to paint 6-8 illustrations for a Witch themed show. I don't have much time to come up with original ideas for paintings these days because I am already working on a solo show that will happen in November this year, in Bordeaux, France (they need 20 paintings !!).

At first I really wanted to make a series of witches that would be in the same vibe/style/color palette. Since I couldn't come up with a nice series of paintings, I panicked and ended up not liking what I sketched, so I decided to paint what made me happy, and went for a completely different style for each illustration. It won't be a coherent/harmonious series, but at least it will be done in time ! 😅

I have had this idea of showing the "anatomy" of a witch for a few months now, I didn't know how to actually draw it, but I felt like it could be a fun one.

So I started looking at classical portraits on Pinterest and found this one (super blurry but I loved the pose, the book and her dress) :

 Marquise Chasseloup-Laubat by Joseph Désiré Court (1831)

Here's the sketch :

Black outlines :

First painting session (a painting session is about 1h30, 2h) :

Second session :

Third day : I painted the cat and didn't like the difference between the cute cat and the raven I had just painted. So I decided to erase the cat and start over, so it's in the same style as the raven :

I redrew a cat on paper first, then sketched it again on my iPad just to be sure it would fit in her arms. I printed it out, and started "drawing" with blue paint :

Finished painting :

Details :

As you can see, there are a bunch of brush strokes on the cat - there were so many layers of paint underneath, it was impossible to make it look clean at this point 😶

Colors I used :

The idea for this painting was to draw fun stuff on her dress, to show her anatomy. Magical elements that make a witch who she is. I also added numbers to each elements to later write somewhere what it is/what it means to the witch.

I haven't written a caption for the elements yet, and thought people could imagine whatever the elements in the dress mean. You can come up with ideas if you'd like !

If I ever use this illustration to make prints, I'd like to write the caption on the back, like I did with the Greek moodboard, and the witch moodboard a few years ago.

That's it for today ! I hope you'll like it 🥰

Thanks again for the support on Patreon !! 🧡💫

Hugs,

Sibylline