#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 17: Baba Yaga

Under the crooked crescent moon, deep in the birchwood where the trees whisper secrets and the air tastes faintly of iron and moss, there she is – Baba Yaga herself, shuffling about her yard of bones. The fence rattles with skulls that grin too knowingly, and the scent of green bubbling brew drifts out like a memory you’d rather forget.

Her hut, of course, perches proudly on chicken legs – restless, fidgeting, ready to stomp or spin away at a moment’s notice. You can almost hear the creak of wood and feathered shuffle as it shifts, like it’s got opinions about who’s visiting tonight.

Baba Yaga isn’t your standard witch – she’s the test at the edge of the world. The wild grandmother. The forest’s own enforcer. She’ll feed you stew or feed you *to* the stew, depending on how polite you are and whether you remembered to bring a proper gift. Sometimes she helps heroes, sometimes she devours them, and sometimes she just laughs until dawn.

In the glow of her cauldron, I like to think she’s cooking up more than trouble – maybe just a potion for the long cold months ahead, or a little something to keep the house’s joints from creaking too loudly in the frost. The bones, the skulls, the mushrooms – decor for a witch who knows exactly where the boundaries are, because she built them herself.

Sweet dreams from the Slavic side of the forest tonight. Watch your step – and if the trees start leaning in to listen, best bow low and keep walking.

#mdc25d17 #BabaYaga #WitchingSeason #MabsDrawlloweenClub
#roanokeva #doodle #digitalmarkers #digitalpencils #digitalcrayons

Original draft –

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Day 16: Gnome

Out in the woods this morning, just where the mist was starting to burn off the ridges, I saw him – or maybe just the idea of him – a little fellow in red and blue, moving steady between the birches. Looked like he belonged there, the way fallen leaves belong to autumn, not out of place at all.

Maybe gnomes are just the woods extending perception into the world of towns. You know how sometimes a hollow log looks like it’s breathing, or a tree knot has the hint of an eye watching? He had that same feel – ancient and familiar, but friendly. The sort of presence that carries a quiet “good morning” without saying a word.

He paused by a fallen branch, leaned on his walking stick, and nodded – not to me, I think, but to the forest itself. Behind him, a deer lifted its head, half-curious, half-dreaming. The air smelled of leaf mold, cool water, and the promise of another good day.

Maybe gnomes don’t guard treasure, but the small magic of keeping things as they are – moss green, roots deep, and hearts steady.

🪄🍄🌲
Stay kind to the small spirits in your woods, friends.

#mdc25d16 #gnome #roanokeva #doodle #digitalmarkers #mabsdrawlloweenclub

🦇 Day 15 – Vampire
#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025

Some folks imagine vampires gliding through moonlit castles, their velvet cloaks billowing while organs thunder in the distance. But let’s be honest – immortality is long, and even creatures of the night need late-night snacks.

Which brings us to tonight’s scene:
Our fanged friend here has skipped the dramatic coffin exit and gone straight for the fridge, pajama-cape and all. Eyes glowing, grin sharp, juice box in hand – no goblets, no ancient ritual – just slurp, slurp, drip. The crimson straw of destiny. The microwave in the background warmed it to perfection after he pulled it from his icebox.

There’s something charming about a vampire caught mid-swig in a modern kitchen. It’s relatable. Who among us hasn’t stood in front of the fridge at midnight, hunting for something to satisfy that oddly specific craving? His just happens to be… O Negative CapriSun.

Maybe the biggest horror isn’t fangs or fog, but how comfortable the supernatural has become in suburbia. Vampires used to stalk foggy streets. Now they’re raiding leftovers and googling “how long does blood stay fresh in the fridge.” Eternal night meets Tupperware life.

Still… there’s a certain cozy magic in it.
A quiet kitchen. The hum of the fridge.
A cape brushing linoleum.
A little red drip on the floor.

Immortality tastes like Wednesday.

#vampire #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #spookyseason #midnightsnack #doodle #digitalmarkers #mdc25d15

🦇 What do you think – does he rinse the straw or just put the box back half-finished like a monster?

Doodle animated by chad

Picked up a little work of art at the @flag_osw_roanokeva, a cute little pink porcupine drawing.

We absolutely love to visit and leave little pieces, and I had to grab this little dude. It must’ve been populated recently,  there was quite a lot of stuff in the box.

#porcupine #pink #chrispost #roanokeva #littlefreeartlibrary

🦴 Lovely Bones – Day 14 of #mabsdrawlloweenclub

There’s something quietly beautiful about bones. Not the spooky movie kind that rattle out of closets, but the real ones—soft ivory curves, tiny joints engineered with impossible precision, the memory of motion still humming through them like echoes in an empty hall. I always feel a hush when I see a found bone on a trail, like stepping into the remnant of a story that nature wrote long before I arrived.

Tonight, I’m thinking about how bones are our built-in time capsules. They hold shape long after everything else fades. They are both blueprint and gravestone. They carry the art of survival and the poetry of what once lived. Even the smallest vertebra or hollow bird wing feels like a cathedral of structure and silence.

Lovely bones remind me that beauty isn’t always soft or alive or decorated. Sometimes it’s stark. Bare. Honest. The architecture beneath the skin. The quiet strength that holds us together through storms and sleep and heartbreak. We only notice them when something goes wrong – but they’ve always been working, steadfast guardians, day after day.

I imagine a skeleton dancing – joyful, clattering, free of weight – and I laugh a little. Even stripped down, we still have rhythm. Maybe lovely bones are a reminder: beneath everything, we’re stronger than we think. And strangely elegant, in our own rattly way.

Here’s to bones – hidden supports, natural sculptures, moon-pale reminders that even after life moves on, form and memory can linger. Lovely, indeed.


#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #lovelybones #mdc25 #mdc25day14 #digitalmarkers #doodle

Day 13 – Omen

There’s a certain hush when the world holds its breath just before twilight, when the sky melts from pale blue to ink and the trees begin whispering stories. Tonight, a raven perched on the lightning-twisted branches of the old pine by the ridge. Black as midnight, sharp as memory. He didn’t caw. He didn’t move. He just watched.

The moon hung low behind him like a silver ring, the mountains layered in soft blues – dreamlike, distant. The forest below fanned out like a quiet army of evergreens, all listening alongside me. The air felt charged, like a page about to turn.

Some folks say a raven at dusk is a warning. Others say it’s a messenger. Me? I think he’s a reminder. That change has claws and feathers. That endings perch silently, but beginnings do too. An omen doesn’t have to be doom – it can also be good fortune.

He stayed until the last light slipped away, then lifted off like a shadow remembering how to fly. The branch trembled, but the sky opened. I watched him go and felt, strangely… ready.

Maybe the forest knows: sometimes the darkest silhouettes carry the brightest truths.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #omen #mdc25d13 #raven #digitalmarkers #doodle #roanokeva

Prompt – “Yokai”

Neko no Odoriba: A dancing cat spirit that wears stolen napkins as party dresses. I suspect our little familiar might have one or two in her lineage, as she is a delightful dancer and is also partial to napkin theft.

#doodle #mdwc25 #mdwc25d12 #yokai #nekonoodoriba #digitalmarkers
#roanokeva #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #MabsDrawlloweenClub

Ordered Chinese food tonight, and the person on the other end called it “bwokwee” and it tickled me to no end. I’m sure my Mandarin pronunciation of anything vegetable would be far worse.

Day 11 of #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 –  Pumpkin.

The moon hung low like a held breath tonight, bright enough to sketch silver trails through the trees. The forest felt like it was waiting for something… and then I heard hooves. Slow, deliberate, echoing in the marrow of the dark.

Out from the ink of the woods, he appeared – headless, but not helpless. Cloaked in shadow atop a restless horse, posture straight as an exclamation mark. In his raised hand, the pumpkin burned like a lantern of mischief, flickering grin carved too wide to be friendly. It wasn’t just light – it was a signal. A warning. Maybe even a celebration.

The horse snorted fog into the night air, ears twitching like it could hear things I couldn’t. The rider didn’t need eyes to look directly at me – I felt the attention like a cold fingertip on the spine. But instead of dread, I felt… invited. As if the forest opened the door just for this moment.
Pumpkins aren’t always cozy porch guardians or pie filling. Sometimes they’re helmets of haunted memory. Sometimes they’re the only beacon in a headless world.

When he vanished back into the trees, the silence felt heavier for knowing what rode in it. I stayed a while longer, watching the moon return to being just the moon.
But I swear I saw a faint orange glow deeper in the woods… and it was smiling.

Day 10 – “Dark Water” – #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025

Out there in the moon’s reflection, something stood where no footprints should exist.

The water was calm – too calm – like silk stretched over glass. The moon ballooned huge and pale across the black sky, so bright it looked like a doorway instead of a light. Stars hung around it like silent witnesses. And in the middle of all that silver glow… a figure.

Silhouette. Humanoid. But not quite human.

It rose from the lagoon without a splash, every ripple bending away from it like the sea was afraid to touch. Long, trailing limbs. A helmet? A crown? Maybe a memory of something that used to belong to the stars. It didn’t attack. It didn’t roar. It just stood there, staring into that enormous moon like it was home.

This place at night already feels like the edge of the world. But tonight, it was.
The horizon vanished. Sky and sea merged into one big abyss, stitched together by moonlight. Time flattened into a single moment, and I swear I could feel the tide breathing, slow and ancient.

Was the creature coming toward shore… or had it just arrived from somewhere deeper than the ocean?
Somewhere older?

I didn’t feel afraid. I felt… small, but invited. Like the water was saying:
There’s more to this world than land and logic.

Dark water isn’t empty. It’s a mirror, a memory, a doorway.
And sometimes – on nights like this – it opens.

If that moonlit figure turns and beckons, I might just follow.

#creaturefromtheblacklagoon #gillman #mabsdrawlloweenclub #mdc25d10 #doodle #digitalmarkers #darkwater

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 Day 9 — Undead Under the Moon

Tonight’s prompt: Undead.
And here he comes – wrapped in yesterday’s linens, glowing softly beneath a turquoise moon. Not your usual shambling horror, but a lone wanderer out for a walk through the afterlife’s quieter corners.

There’s something peaceful about this one. A mummy, yes, but not malicious – more curious. Maybe he’s out stretching his centuries-old limbs, feeling the cool breeze on what used to be skin, tracing the constellations he once saw as a living man. The desert remembers him, and the stars do too.

The ground blushes pink beneath his steps – a sign that even the undead leave a little warmth behind when they move through the world with purpose. His eyes glow like twin coals, steady but not unkind. A spark of persistence, of still here, even when time has said otherwise.

Sometimes the undead aren’t chasing anyone. Sometimes, they’re just trying to remember what it felt like to be alive.

(A soft hum of wind, a shuffle of bandages, and the moon keeping watch. That’s tonight’s magic.)

#MabsDrawlloweenClub #undead #mdc25d9 #doodle #digitalmarkers #roanokeva #mummy

Tonight the projector hums like a tired cicada, and on the wall – shadows twist themselves into The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film is over a century old now, yet it feels more alive than most things that breathe. Angles warp, streets curl like paper, and faces flicker between terror and trance. Everything looks as if it’s been drawn by a feverish hand that didn’t want to sleep.

Caligari, the carnival hypnotist, is a figure stitched from nightmares and theater curtains. His somnambulist, Cesare, drifts through painted alleys with eyes that know too much. You can almost feel the dust of 1920 Germany clinging to the frame – fear, guilt, and the weight of dreams gone wrong. It’s a horror film made before the word “horror” knew what it was.

What I love most is how unreal everything is, and how that unreality tells the truth. The crooked sets, the shadows shaped like claws, the distorted perspective – all of it feels like a map of the inside of a frightened mind. You can trace the lines of postwar despair in every corner. The monsters here are not supernatural; they are people who sleepwalk through authority and obedience.

Watching it now, you realize how quiet it all is. No screaming, no chase music – just painted dread. Cesare’s slow walk through the night feels like watching your own heartbeat creep away from you. And that twist ending, still sharp after all these years, whispers that madness might just be the truest storyteller of all.

Afterward I turned off the light and the room seemed wrong, tilted somehow. The lamp’s shadow bent the wall like it wanted to crawl inside. Maybe that’s Caligari’s trick – once you’ve seen his world, you start noticing how crooked your own furniture looks.

A masterpiece of dreams gone sour, a fairy tale that forgot to wake up. If you listen closely, even now, you can hear Cesare breathing behind the curtain.

(★★★★★)

Day 8: #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Lightning Lad ⚡️

Ah, the scent of ozone and wild ambition in the air tonight. The lab hums and flickers, somewhere between genius and madness – right where the best ideas are born. Our electric friend, Lightning Lad (you might recognize him under another name involving a certain Frankenstein), sits tall in his crackling throne, catching every spark like it’s a kiss from the storm.

Dr. Bright-Ideas over there is holding up his glowing goblet of voltage, shouting something joyful and half-mad – and who could blame him? The moment between “it’s alive” and “what have I done?” is a sacred one, worthy of celebration. The kind of thunderclap that wakes the bats and tickles the moon.

Maybe we all need a little of that energy – the charge that jolts us from the gray fog and gets the heart sparking again. A reminder that sometimes you are the experiment and the electricity, both.

💡⚡️#Drawlloween #MabsDrawlloweenClub2025 #LightningLad #SpookySeason #ItLives #ElectricMood
#mdc25d8 #doodle
#digitalmarkers

Graveyard stroll tonight, just me and the local ghoul again – tall fella, bones like a xylophone, hair doing its own haunted thing. He’s out there under a blue moon, gnawing thoughtfully on what might be last week’s femur, looking more contemplative than terrifying. A philosopher of the crypts, maybe.

The pumpkins around him grin wide, their candlelight laughter flickering across crooked stones. Bats loop lazy arcs overhead like punctuation marks in a ghost story. The ghoul doesn’t mind the company; he hums a tune between bites, something you might hear drifting through an old radio at midnight.

It’s not all doom and gloom out here – there’s a kind of peace to the chill. The trees are bare but listening, and even the graves seem to sigh in rhythm. The ghoul’s content in his way: unbothered, unhurried, eternal.

Sometimes I think he’s just reminding us – life’s short, bones are temporary, but a good night walk among friends (living or otherwise) lasts forever in memory.

#AutumnNights #GraveyardShift #GhoulFriend #MabsDrawlloweenClub
#digitalmarkers #roanokeva #mdcd7

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025