I always had the sense that Roald Dahl’s The Witches was talking about more than just monstrous child-hunters masquerading as ordinary women.  Is it all a misogynistic metaphor for a young boy’s secret fear of women? Dahl’s perverse sensibility makes it all the more difficult to discern his true intent. The main antagonist, the titled but unnamed Grand High Witch, fascinates me both as a figure of fear and as a symbol. A wildly extravagant villain, she embodies that very Christian tradition of woman as snake: the two-faced, bipolar entity that simultaneously embodies honey and venom, with the capacity for both seductive appeal and lethal violence.

This was my first try at scratchboard - it's lovely when done right but rather unforgiving.