The Witches’ Sabbath was a 4 x 8 foot (96” x 48”) mural on wood panel that lasted 8 ½ months from conceptualization to finish. This project was created as a study of experimentation on a mural scale with emphasis on planning and preparation for acrylic mastery and subject matter. Up until this point I had not created an artwork at this scale, nor had I done as much research, preparation, or planning as I did for this piece. Much like my inspiration, the Francisco de Goya painting with the same title, the goal was to create an artwork that visualized how I felt about the current state of my country. The painting uses color, graphic imagery, and caricatures to convey a commentary on politics, war, death, and hypocrisy in modern-day society. As of February 2025, this piece is hanging in the art wing of my old high school.
During this 8-month period, I was undergoing some traumatic life changes as I dealt with anxiety for the future, all while battling some serious mental health issues. I experienced the roughest patch of an ongoing chronic depression battle, as well as enduring symptoms of schizophrenia and psychosis. Because of this, I had a strenuous and complicated relationship with this artwork. On one hand, this artwork served as an escape, a chance to pour out the terrifying and disturbing things I was both feeling and seeing. On the other hand, because I was entertaining and, to some extent, embracing these thoughts and tendencies, the longer I worked on the artwork, the worse I got. All of this combined with the stress that comes with the new experience of working on a big piece (with a deadline) at this scale created a toxic environment where my creativity was at an all-time high, but my mental health was rapidly declining. The painting consumed me. It was all that I thought about; I saw it in my dreams. I wanted to stop, but I knew that if I did, it would never let me rest. When I finally finished it, I took a 3-4 month hiatus from creating anything to try and recover.
Despite all this, I'm happy that I took on this project. This painting taught me some valuable lessons that I was able to internalize and use to make me a better artist. It taught me both time and resource management; it gave me a new appreciation for mural artists, and it taught me the importance of planning and preparation for art making. Even when I'm doing smaller paintings, I still sit back and think, research, and draft ideas before I jump in (a valuable skill).
Below are concept sketches, color studies, and first draft drawings done before and during the creation of this artwork. Many of these sketches I now consider cringe, edgy, underdeveloped, or straight-up bad drawings, but I think it's important to showcase the process and my mindset through visuals created during production. Many of the original ideas and characters, as well as those that were created mid-production, were eventually scrapped, and of the original designs that did stay, they had to be painted over and toned down multiple times. I hope these drawings give you, aside from additional context, a better understanding that to have a good idea, you have to have lots and lots of bad ones.
