How I designed witches for an elven fairy tale called The Waking Prince makes a good Drawing tip.

The story called for a kingdom that has a significant witch problem—an infestation, if you will.  Therefore, I needed to be able to show witches of various sorts doing witchy things.  I needed to create a handful of variations on what a witch looks like, to keep the story interesting!

My first step in designing three different witches was to arm myself with information.  I know roughly what I want my witches to look like and I could start by simply drawing what I imagine.  But, if I do research first, and I encounter a detail or feature that I am not confident about, I can then look to my gathered research to figure it out.

So, before I start drawing, I hunt for pictures.  This fairy tale has human characters, so I searched for older human ladies.  I wanted to see how they wear their head wraps, how their skin wrinkles around their eyes, and how their brows furrow.  My reference material needs to be detailed.

Note:  there is no real reference material for the familiar Halloween witch. This is because she is rather pretty.  This witch is almost a normal woman with a few exaggerated features.

Looking at these pictures, you might think that my work is almost done.  However, I want to create something original, so I play with the drawings to make them interesting to me.  I gave the Crone a threadbare hood with a plaid patch.  The Baba Yaga witch has a bulging, milky eye.  Oh, and she is also balding.

Now that I have the facial appearances down, I need to know what they all look like standing up in their witchy clothes…