Seasons of the Witch, Christina Peterson

Christina Peterson
Seasons of the Witch, 2020
Hand sewn illustrated book
12 x 14"
Images courtesy of the artist

Artist statement:

Augustana professors pride themselves on bringing students out of their comfort zones and creating projects that would allow the students to grow and create new and different skills. With this in mind, I want to be able to show that while I enjoy and specialize in creating motion graphic work, I am not limited to a computer or one specific program and enjoy working on projects out of my comfort zone. By creating with my hands, it allows me to gain more experience in different mediums and express other aspects of my creativity.

My project is, simply, about a witch. It is a comic book, but in the form of a hand-bound book. To give my pages an aged appearance, I stained them with tea and coffee before baking them in my oven.  I then used gouache paint and various sizes of sharpies for the interior of the book. The book is bound using jute twine, different colors of waxed thread, and wood glue. For the outside of the book, I used a black faux leather as well as other book accent decorations to make it look complete and professional. I wanted things to look slightly old and natural. I also wanted the book to look professional, but also purposefully hand crafted. The term witch can be blown out of proportion and twisted. People believe that if someone is a witch, they must be evil. I hope to educate people on how wiccans really are and how they celebrate their holidays. I hope to capture the nature focused and earthy tone that witches are known for with my book. Since I mainly work digitally, working with my hands has allowed me to branch out with my creativity. By doing this, I have learned how to work with new materials like gouache as well as teaching myself how to bind my own books. I think overall, my SI is not a complete encyclopedia for wiccans. Since I am not a witch myself, merely someone interested in the religion, I cannot provide a super detailed account of the daily life of a witch. Anyone who enjoys bookbinding, painting, and/or comic books would hopefully be interested in my work. The wiccan community is a community I would welcome to view my book, but I overall hope that those interested in learning about wicca would read my book. I was always interested in witchcraft and wicca before starting this project, but I feel as though this project gave me a much deeper appreciation for wicca. Five years from now is a mystery, but since beginning this project I have started mixing multiple media together in a variety of ways. By combining different programs, mediums, and styles I found that I am able to achieve a unique, lively feel to my projects.

The overall goal of this project was to show that as a motion designer, I am not limited to motion and I am able to extend myself into other types of work. I can understand other aspects of design. I actually prefer being involved in more aspects than one and understanding the full scope of a project. It has taught me that the best way to work is many ways.