Meet The Witchsona

In its infinite wisdom, the Internet has decided that one week early in January is to be “Witchsona Week”, wherein one draws oneself as a crazy fantasy witch with magic centered around one theme or another – mushroom witch, bird witch, cheese witch, whatever. I always feel a bit weird about that one; participating in group things is fun, but I don’t need to make up an imaginary witch to be – I am one. I’ve done an intensely-researched Tarot deck, I have cast some spells and (possibly) had them work. (Or have succumbed to massive confirmation bias while stoned. Magic is like that sometimes.)

This year, that coincided with a “Meet The Artist” thing going around, where you combine a self-portrait with a few bits of data, and maybe some things you likes/dislikes, and the contents of your usual bag.

I decided to combine the two.

reference selfie

AnimatedPhoto
Animgif compilation of reference shots for #witchsonaweek.

Tools: iPhone, GorillaPod for iPhone, and the no-longer-available-on-the-app-store SnappyCam. Clamp it to a lamp, dial its speed down, and go.

(Apple hired the dude who wrote SnappyCam, which is mostly about taking super high-res burst mode shots – he did some serious magic in his compression code to save a lot more data than normal. It just so happens that he also lets you dial the speed down as far as 1 photo/hr. 2/sec is GREAT for taking a rapid flurry of reference selfies.)

I highly recommend the combination of your phone, the phone Gorillapod, and an app that can do auto-selfies for when you need some quick ref. It won’t help much if your body is strikingly different from what you’re drawing, but it’s quick and easy. Especially when you can use the front-facing camera and actually see your shots as they happen.

Before I got Snappycam, I used either Genius or Camera+; one of those two offers both timed self-shots and repeating timer, but annoyingly won’t go any faster than 5s/shot, so it’s kinda tedious. Now that I have Snappycam, I didn’t bother with either of those two when I chose my new app loadout after losing my old phone.

(PS: The wand is clear plastic, with a bunch of glittery stars and beads suspended in some kind of liquid inside of it. It is also the wand I use when I do serious magjickq’n stuff. Hand-turned ash with crystals embedded in it? Bah. I’m a chaos witch, and using something like that would mean I was starting to take this stuff entirely too seriously.)