Atomic Age Witch

The year: 1952. The place: Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The subject: one Grimelda Spellington, a potion-making, broomstick-riding, cauldron-owning old school witch. Miss Spellington decides she's tired of being persecuted by the community and having everyone in the neighborhood refer to her home as "that haunted house on the end of the block that's dragging all the property values down."

So she did what everyone did in the Fifties-- she conformed. She ditched the pointed hat and black robes, bought a new wardrobe, got her hair permed and started wearing pearls around the house. 

Did it work? Let's just say the neighborhood Bridge Club was never the same after that year.

Here's the first sketch I did of Grimelda.

And here's the tighter final sketch. Note that at first I drew her wearing a neck scarf, bobby socks, Oxford shoes and a poodle skirt (except the skirt had a black cat on it instead of a dog. Com-O-Dee!) because that was an outfit in the 1950s.But then I realized that that's what teens wore, not adults. So I had to look up ladies' outfits from the 1950s until I found something suitably June Cleaver-ish.

For a while I toyed with the idea of having her hold a 1950s vacuum cleaner instead of a broom, but I just couldn't get it to work. Plus, since she was wearing fairly normal clothing I thought she needed to be holding onto some traditionally witchy items.

When I first drew the "atomic magic" on the end of her wand, it was an electric blue. It looked really jarring when I stepped back and looked at it, as there was no other blue anywhere in the drawing. So I changed it to a more color-coordinated yellow. Thanks, Photoshop!

Drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet.