COVEN: A Book of 100 Witches - Witchtober 2022 Day 15 Pin-Up

Witchtober 2022 Day 15 Pin-Up Illustration
Art by Richard Pace
Published in "COVEN: A Book of 100 Witches"

I've previously posted 2 pieces by Richard Pace to my gallery. If you missed those here are the links to check them out. A color piece of Kitty Pryde & Lockheed and a black and white piece of Magik.

Bill Cox hosted Richard Pace this past Saturday on the Comic Art Live YT channel for an interview & art sale. Unfortunately I was not able to catch it live but I was able to check out the interview on the rewind and Richard shared some great stories from his past experiences and new information on his future projects.

One of those projects involved his very popular Witch illustrations which started in a series of Witchtober drawings in October of 2022, repeated in October of 2023, and continued with a weekly Witchy Wednesday drawing series from there. 100 of his Witch illustrations (including this one from the first Witchtober in 2022) were published in a book called "COVEN: A Book of 100 Witches" which raised over $25,000 on Zoop.

It was interesting to hear Richard talk about this series which became one of his most popular projects online and as far as art sales. I was lucky to get this one during the first Witchtober in 2022, in an instantly sold out art drop when he was repped by Cadence at the time.

He is now working on a series of short stories for a follow up "Witch" book this October which creates some world building around the witch-verse, with a full graphic novel to come potentially the following year if the next project is successful. I'll definitely be checking that out when the time comes.

Something he mentioned during the interview which I wasn't previously aware of was that this illustration series/character was inspired by Leroy Neiman's "Femlin" series of black and white illustrations which were published in Playboy for nearly 50 years. There is a book collecting those illustrations available at LeroyNeiman.com.

I was blown away by Richard's artwork in this series. It's a little more suggestive and risque than the normal stuff I collect (but not so extreme that it's erotic or full nude art, nip slip aside, I suppose!) - she's just out picking some mushrooms in the woods...right!???...haha...But every once in awhile I go outside my normal categories of collecting for something a bit different, see my Illustration/Fine Art gallery folder for a few more examples of that occasional art collecting habit of mine!