We've reached the end of #folktaleweek2019 and I am actually feeling quite sad.
Folk Tale Week is an online art challenge created by a bunch of super talented artists who I'll list at the end of this blog for you) and it was "created to encourage people to share traditionally verbal stories through visual media".
Like a lot of art challenges, each year a set of prompts is released to help artists. But again, with most art challenges, you don't have to follow them strictly, or at all - but most people do.
I found that this year's prompts lent themselves to a more narrative approach, with a clear beginning, middle and end - the main building blocks of a good story - whereas in 2018, the prompts were more like snapshots. Sure you could connect the dots and make a story out of it if you were able to, but last year I had stumbled upon the challenge after it had began, so time wasn't on my side.
This year however, I took some of the lessons I'd learnt from participating in #inktober which had preceded this challenge and drawn to a close a few days before FTW began, giving me plenty of time to plan ahead.
That being said, my ideas changed right at the last minute and my story turned out very different from my original plans!
I knew I wanted to involve my characters Carrot and Toast again from the beginning, and how the story evolved was really fun.
Here are a few of my original sketches - this is how each illustration begins, sketching out different ideas and layouts until I'm happy with the concept...
I LOVE making the initial sketch concepts! This is the part of the process that is closest to my actual drawing style, before I proceed to build the image properly, refining the line art and then rendering each individual part of the image.
Because of the time restraints involved in these art challenges, and the fact that generally my style is pencil based, and that I was starting my day at 5am to work on these illustrations each day, I decided to take more of a digital approach (my scanner is loud and there are humans and kitties sleeping at 5am that I dared not wake up!) and this allowed to finish each illustration in around 2 hours - a process I've managed to really tighten thanks to the time constraints of these art challenges.
Now FTW2019 is finished I'm feeling sad but really happy with the finished images and how my story turned out.
I included a bonus illustration too (#RETURN) and have a few more planned that will thicken up the story a bit more visually, and I'm also planning on turning these in to a book.
If you took part, I hope you had as much fun as I did, if you followed along with Carrot and Toast's adventure - I hope you enjoyed it!
I can't wait for next year's FTW!
Check out all of my FTW art here
Here are those awesome artists responsible for bringing you this challenge, please please go and follow them on instagram their art is gorgeous!