Drawlloween 2020
Every year, one of my favorite artists, Mab Graves, hosts a challenge for the month of October. She uploads prompts in mid September, and anyone that wants to join can create art in any medium and post on Instagram on the coordinating day using the hashtag #mabsdrawlloweenclub. Her challenge was the initial prompt for me to try to grow my drawing abilities, and I've participated in some capacity for the last 3 years. This year I completed a weeks worth of drawings and challenged myself to create a narative for the prompts to connect them all. I had so much fun writing the stories to go along with each illustration and hope to continue this as a series of children's book later on.
Day 1: Werewolf
Clementine did not like being a werewolf. The fur made her itch, the fleas were unbearable, but much worse than that was she felt all alone. None of her old friends even recognized her anymore, and her parents...well that’s an even sadder story for another day. All Clementine knew was that one morning she woke up and went to school like any normal 2nd grade girl, and poof, she was waking up again but in the woods and her hands were covered in brown fur! It's been months now of wandering through the woods following the whispers of the moon who seems to have taken on the role of her new mother. She doesn’t really care where moon mother is leading her as she really has no place else to be. No school to go to, no chores to do, no friends to play with. So she just walks on, over hills and through valleys, between dense forest trees that her new claws easily cut a path through. She wanders and wanders barely hoping that one day moon mother will show her where all this wandering will lead.
Day 2: Pumpkin
In the corner of the Otherway Woods lies the coziest cottage a wandering soul could ever stumble across. Nestled between trees so large 6 full grown Sasquatch cannot touch hands around the trunk. The light from each window draws all strange and lonely creatures to its porch and the witch who lives inside the cottage has a heart for all who need a place to call home. How the cottage came to be is quite a mystery itself, but in the Otherway Woods it’s best not to dwell too hard on mysteries or else you’d spin around in circles so fast trying to figure it all out you’ll end up falling over and the fae might just take off with your shoes! Those rascals!
Feeling like she’d been walking in circles and quite dizzy, little Clementine found herself drawn towards warm light, and the smell of pumpkin pie sent drool down her fangs. She was nervous to go any closer and tried to turn around, but moon mother whispered tenderly “keep going my little one, your home is waiting on you”
Feeling like she’d been walking in circles and quite dizzy, little Clementine found herself drawn towards warm light, and the smell of pumpkin pie sent drool down her fangs. She was nervous to go any closer and tried to turn around, but moon mother whispered tenderly “keep going my little one, your home is waiting on you”
Day 3: Changeling
On sunny mornings, when the light breaks apart into kisses that wake you up with a smile, and the birds form a chorus line outside your window, little Rosalia likes to join in on the fun and add her music to the melody. Now a baby that can play the flute better than most professional adults would be strange to some, but not in the Otherway Woods. Here it’s simply a beautiful morning where the strange and peculiar isn’t so strange and peculiar and Rosy serenades the residents of Otherway Woods into the best morning mood one can have. Her music is said to taste like whatever someone wants most for breakfast that day and therefore sends the entire forest into a tizzy making mushroom pie and honeysuckle mimosas, acorn stew and carrot quiches!
Day 4: Poison
Intoxicating and deadly, beware the witch’s poison garden! Hemlock and Nightshade, Wolfsbane and Death Caps, there’s more than a couple murderous plants in this garden. Now, why a kind witch like the one living in the pumpkin cottage in the Otherway Woods would have such a dangerous collection of greenery, we best not investigate too much. However in the Otherway Woods there are mysteries abundant and what may look like poison to one might just be a healing salve to another. Goblins, for instance, rely on the seeds from Jimson Weed to grow back their spiked toes when they break, or even to prevent breakage as they can be quite brittle without proper nutrition. Death Camas have proved extraordinarily helpful at relieving an upset tummy in vampires and a Henbane salve is necessary to achieve proper broom altitudes when flying.
Day 5: Witch
Before the pumpkin cottage existed and any creatures had found a home in the Otherway Woods, Lillyella knew what her future would be. Flashes of a large and different family had shot through her mind since she could barely balance on a broom. Now the story of how she found the Otherway Woods is a long, dangerous, and sometimes quite funny tale, but we won’t get into that today. No, today Lilla is much more preoccupied with playing tricks on the fae that took up residence last year in the Otherway Woods. Now Lilla loves the fae and thinks they’re a fun bunch, but they are pranksters through and through and no one is going to out mischief the mischief mistress herself. Just wait until they uncover the beautiful rocks left by a nearby creek they won’t be able to resist taking back to their garden.
Pop rocks won’t be what they expect until too late when their backpacks are sparking with mini fireworks!
Silly fae, how did you fall for that one!
Pop rocks won’t be what they expect until too late when their backpacks are sparking with mini fireworks!
Silly fae, how did you fall for that one!
Days 6 & 7: Familiar/ Vampire
Downright lazy and getting old, Clover was a pretty lame vampire cat. Most people were terrified of vampire cats, the idea of claws and cat mania along with sucking the blood out of its victims made for a pretty abandoned and lonesome breed, but Lilla being a strange and unusual witch herself found her familiar in an equally strange and unusual creature. In her heyday, Clover would drain the blood from an entire village of field mice, but those days are long gone and she is not happy about it. When she showed up at Lilla’s door years ago, she was a tough and fearsome feline of the night, but endless belly scratches, magically created bowls of blood (she was a witches familiar after all), and a comfy sleeping corner has turned her into no more than a basic house cat. Ugh! she loathes the idea of getting lazy and soft and swears to return to her devilish ways, but then hears the twinkle of her food bowl and Lilla uttering the incantation turning milk into her favorite breed of mice blood and all thoughts of the old ways vanish as she scampers on four fluffy paws to the kitchen purring all the way.
Thank you for taking the time to view this project, I hope you enjoyed it, and if you want to follow along with more illustrations and funny tales, find me on instagram @katherinleee!
