Folktale Week
Folktale week is a week-long art challenge that follows several prompts to create an illustrated story. I used the Hansel and Gretel story I was working on to experiment with mixed-media techniques. I still wasn’t sure what style to illustrate this story in, and Folktale Week was the perfect opportunity to play with art materials and create a mini-story.
The first image shows Hansel and Gretel’s father alone, after he has sent his children into the forest. For each image, I sketched out character designs, thumbnail compositions and colour tests before creating the final image in the sketchbook and cleaning up after in Procreate.
I really enjoy the thumbnailing process to quickly get ideas onto the page.
For some images, I relied heavily on procreate to tidy up, change the hue and saturation of colours and add a bit of extra sparkle.
I also find it helpful to draw the same image a few times, changing the materials or techniques to get different results.
This version of the story uses animal characters - rabbits for the children and a sly fox for the witch. Character design is one of my favourite aspects of creating a new story and the Witch in these illustrations was the most fun to draw!
I love to use a sketchbook for my traditional work as it helps me to stay loose and keeps the images from getting too tight. I am using a watercolor sketchbook for these illustrations which have a heavier texture than normal.
I find that challenges like Folk Tale week are a great way to test papers, colour palettes, character designs, or illustration techniques before moving on to the final project. During this week I realised I prefer a much smoother paper!
