>>RAGANU NAKTS <<
Witches' night
Raganu Nakts (Witches’ Night) is a zine based on Latvian folk beliefs about the summer solstice.
I already have a whole bunch of illustrations based on Latvian Midsummer traditions and rituals, but this time I decided to focus on witches. Midsummer, or Jāņi, has always been considered a time when evil spirits are extremely powerful. There a lot of folklore about witches: beliefs, folk songs, spells etc. These ladies are always evil, but I like to think that there can be some nice witches as well.
I began working on this zine by looking through the Latvian folk beliefs connected to summer solstice and picking the most expressive of them. Then, after a couple of very rough doodles in my sketchbook and a bunch of little sketches with markers, I made a lot of black and white roughs in PS capturing all ideas that came to my mind.
In this project I wanted to try something that looks slightly different from my usual style. This is what I got after playing around with different brushes and shapes.
Witch of the grass snakes
Fern flower
Making flower wreaths
Werewolf witch
Aside from the zine itself, I used these illustrations for postcards. Printed on 300gsm watercolor paper Tintoretto gesso.
Some illustrations didn't make it to the final version, so I printed them out as postcards as well.
A spell against evil witches
