The Cave Witch

This is basically a commission riffing on the rest of my collection. Craig wrote and drew a graphic novel called 'Giants, Trolls, Witches, Beasts: ten tales from the deep, dark woods' aimed at younger readers. This work for kids made me think we probably like a lot of the same stories and it'd be cool to have him do something in the same vein. This was probably the most fun commission experience I've had. A few emails to and fro where I told Craig about the elements that repeat in my collection (snakes, skulls, ravens, witches, people with ridiculous swords) until he said he had an idea in mind for 'something a bit dark with gnarled trees' but wanted to go away and work it up a bit organically at the drawing board. I was pretty confident we were on the same page by this stage so resisted any art-directing urges and just enjoyed the mystery of not being entirely sure what the final piece would be. Along the way, I got a couple of thumbnail compositions to choose between and process pics to follow the evolution of the piece through rough pencils to detailed pencils and then inks. Craig started calling it 'The Cave Witch' right from the beginning so I'm keeping the title. The image is around 13x20 so pretty large. Already planning getting a companion piece down the line.