Baba Yaga & Vasilissa

Baba Yaga is a character from Russian fairy tales. She is an old witch (sometimes nice and sometimes canabalistic) who lives deep in the forest in a hut with chicken feet. At night the hut is lit by the light of glowing skulls. In the particular story I'm illustrating, a girl by the name of Vasilissa is sent to Baba Yaga's house by her evil stepmother; the stepmother hopes Baba Yaga will kill Vasilissa. But Vasilissa has a magic doll to help her.

And here's my process, if you're interested :P

I played around with lots of different ideas but this is the thumbnail I decided on.

Thumbnail to rough pencil sketch. Lots of photoshop tweeking to get everything just right.

Some designing sketches...

Costumes based on traditional Russian folkware

And here's the value and color studies. Played with different light temperatures. I switched the figure a bit from these studies...

Just a small note on reference. I built a diorama to see how candlelit would play out in this scene. It was a simple one though, some colored paper, cardboard and a few candles, oh and a doll. It really helped by clarifying issues with the lighting. I also burned a bit of my plaster skull figuring out how skulls would glow. Oops. And I posed for the little girl. Good reference is a pain to get but it helps so much.

Started with the big gradients to make sure I got them right. If I messed up on them, it meant starting a whole new painting. Progress pics are courtesy of my phone, so excuse their darkness and bad quality.

Next another hard task: painting Vasilissa. Again if I messed up here it was time to start over......

Almost done........

And just a refresher of what the final is...

Baba Yaga's Looking at You

This is a companion piece to girl and the chicken legged house (Baba Yaga & Vasilissa). Where as the other piece is a two-page spread this on was to be a book cover. Watercolor painting edited in photoshop. 

Prep work:

Took a while to get to the illustration I actually did. These are two sketches that almost were. But I like the one I colored better than these two. 

Pencil sketch

Color sketches. 

 Progress pics:

I started and failed already once with this illustration by messing up the background's wash so when I started a new version I frisket-ed the heck out of the painting. All that orange is frisket.  

It's kind of terrifying to continue painting when she's looking at you like this...

And the final again..