cats

Penciled in Clip Studio Paint, inked on watercolor paper, then painted in Clip Studio Paint using Ray Frenden’s terrific watercolor brushes (affiliate link).

I’ve been working on several ideas for a new Doctor Baer story, and one that’s in a third draft stage involves introducing the famous slavic witch into my animal world. This is the working design.

I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of material on Slavic mythology and fairy tales, and the ambiguous witch keeps me fascinated. Neither good nor evil, she stands for the wildness of nature itself. Containing all the sublime terror and joy of participating in life. Naturally that would make her a cat in an anthropomorphic comic!

But I’ll let some of the sources I’ve been using tell her story. Here are some good listens/reads on this character and the archetype she falls into:

NSFW but lively and fun discussion on the Deviant Women podcast:

A thorough discussion on the Mythillogical Podcast:

A shorter presentation on the witch:

Another long-ish podcast from Bone & Sickle.

And here’s a terrific book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes on the wild woman archetype

She shows up as an antagonist (though they call her the Hunchback Fairy) in this 60s Russian film that I unironically adore:

And hey–here’s a cool song that teaches you about her!

Expect to see more drawings of her as I work on the story.