Wicked Witch

Internally I call her "sexy witch," but her name is Samantha (the Witch). Also, that's her cat Meatloaf, and a giant spider. I like to draw cute girls and dumb looking animals and this is the combination of both of them.

This illustration has a 14 year odyssey... of low-key procrastination.

Yeah, I drew this back in 2008. It's like a time capsule piece. I drew it on a huge sheet of paper using blue pencil and had to scan it into the computer in two parts. That's something I haven't done in a long time. Here's what the original scan looks like:

One of the reasons why I like this drawing so much is because it was the first time I did hands and they looked really decent. I still marvel at how good the hands look, and the fact that I drew it all with pencil and paper.

Of course, I wanted to color this drawing digitally, but there were so many roadblocks. I suppose the biggest one being me. There were parts that looked hard to deal with and not knowing how to fix them at the time, I shelved it. It seemed like this illustration would be quite an undertaking.

Compare the original sketch to the colored version: I removed the belt around her waist. I hated it. The skull belt clip thing looked flat. It should be sitting on her thigh. Maybe I could do better now, but sometimes just removing an element makes your life easier.

I also didn't bother with the background I sketched outside the window.

Here's my first attempt to paint Samantha:

This is either 2008 or 2014. It was a long time ago. I was trying to paint with color, but I didn't like how it was turning out. I'm really terrible at blending colors too. Also, I'm trying to render her realistically, but my art style doesn't really fit that.

Another hang up was how to do the lighting because I wanted the cauldron to have green glowing goop inside and have the emissive light cast onto everything around the cauldron. So yeah, lighting the scene would be difficult and I didn't really have a strong concept for how to do that layer-wise or paint-wise and make it look good. It's funny, even 14 years later I remember it was supposed to be neon green and I painted it that way. I could have just made it clear or dark and avoided the whole thing, but no, 14 years later I still hold into the original concept I had for painting it.

So the lighting, intricate detail, and the background were major hang-ups and kept me from finishing the drawing back then.

14 Years Later

I thought I should finish it. Plus, my approach to art like this is much different than it was. Maybe I needed that time to grow in different ways before I could tackle this. I like to joke and say that I'm really lazy, but I mean, I've also written a few books, finished a massive digital graphic novel, and authored plenty of of games personally and for my current company. So like, I'm not that lazy unless I want to be.

I'm comfortable doing my cel-shading approach to coloring. I know how to mix layers better now to achieve various effects so it doesn't feel daunting anymore.

I removed troublesome elements like her belt since it gave me so much trouble.

The inking I had done in the mid-2010s. The lines are wobbly in places and not like how I'd do them today, but when I looked over them, they worked, and I wasn't going to discard that work just to do it again and maybe marginally better. So thanks, past self.

I'm also okay with taking shortcuts. The sparkles and flower boarder are done using Clip Paint Studio's stock brushes -- I like a lot of sparkles and glow-y effects. I used gradients to darken the sides of the room she's in to hide more details -- not that you should be focusing on the background anyway.

So, it's done. There are probably things to correct for later, but I'm happy with it.

I have some other old drawings I still want to render, so maybe you'll see those. They're not all 100% related to the webcomic, but seeing how this is an art gallery, I feel like I can make some exceptions.

More Samantha

You may have seen her in some other illustrations on here including this one:

It's an updated 2019 version of her.

Also, here's an Inktober sketch:

She's got a bit of an attitude.