Folktale Week

I'm not generally a person who enjoys online challenges - partly as they're usually far too vague to pique my interest and I have no idea how to illustrate what feels like words picked at random out of a dictionary, and partly in the case of huge challenges such as Inktober I'm usually so sick of hearing about it before it's even begun and tire of it taking over all of my social media feeds. I don't see the point in taking part in such things when even my favourite artists become background noise, and I doubt I'm the only illustrator who feels this frustration.

However when I heard of Folktale Week, which was held 12-18 November, it definitely felt relevant to my interests and came with a prompt list that actually excited and inspired me so I knew I had to take part. Looking back, I think I aimed a bit too high - I purchased a concertina sketchbook and planned to create a double page spread for each prompt, coloured entirely with Copic markers and coloured pencils to give the storybook feel I was after. I opted to do a double page spread for each prompt as then it would allow each illustration to stand alone, and be less obvious that it was leading onto the next image. I wanted the concertina element to be a bit of a surprise that I could reveal at the end, with each prompt leading onto the next to create a panoramic woodland scene.











You can view a video of the full concertina here on my Instagram.

It ended up being a lot more work than I initially anticipated with each illustration taking on average 5-6 hours, and although I gave myself a few days head start I still ended up falling a little bit behind on the final two days as I was busy with other commitments - how people manage to do month long challenges is beyond me! I actually really enjoyed the process though, I haven't created work to a deadline since leaving uni and I thrive really well under that kind of pressure. Not having the time to over-plan and over-think everything is really liberating and allows me to just get on with it and switch off my perfectionism.

The first prompt was 'Forest' which is why I decided to set the whole thing in the woods, and apart from the reference to Baba Yaga in the first image, I decided to keep most of the prompts fairly vague and inspired by folktales rather than a direct representation of. I felt that if I tried to match each prompt to a particular tale, then the whole concertina wouldn't flow as well, and I wanted the viewer to be able to decide their own narrative from the images.

The very last prompt with the raccoons is definitely my favourite, but then again they are my favourite animals!