Folktober 2021

Folktober, illustration

Every October I try my hand at a daily drawing challenge. I usually am also working full time and I’m always surprised at how tough it is to make time for this kind of thing. Usually I end up skipping a few days. (I think I only managed to “complete” the challenge 1 year).

Day 1 Greenman – First Folktober illustration and first water colour drawing in ages

This year I did Blackthorn Border Morris’s Folktober, where each daily prompt is a different creature from European folklore. It was EXTREMELY fun reading about obscure creatures and myths.

Day 4 – Jenny Greenteeth was easily my favourite creature to read about and where some water colour techniques started paying off.

I wanted to use it to improve with water colours and only use traditional media. I found this process VERY frustrating at times. During my Erl King I got impatient and rushed a few steps. Consequently it didn’t come out as planned which was frustrating because I had spent hours on it. Unlike digital media there is no going back and it’s hard to change anything if you aren’t really with it.

Day 7 – Sheela-na-gig. Around a week in something kind of clicked into place. I kind of remembered that appeal can just come from simple shapes and producing work I was happy with started to be much easier.

So my early process was:

  • Thumbnail drawing – I would do a few quick sketches on a post it note)
  • Draft 1 – Draw a bigger version on an A4 piece.
  • Draft 2 – Flip the card and using a lightbox, draw it again, adjusting anything I wasn’t happy with.
  • Water colour and ink
  • Then I’m done!
Day 13th – Blackthorn. The end of water colour experimenting.

The time it took to do these steps was a luxury. Eventually I went from freelancing back to full time work again. I was determined not to stop so I had to rush or ditch the water colour step.

Folktober 14th – I agonised over this one but got a lot of nice comments about it. I should have just chilled out.

Then I started packing to move house. And I had to cut out doing multiple drafts and doing much research. I just google image searched the word and drew what I saw.

Day 19 – Sin Eater

Finally, once I had moved, I managed to cut it ALL steps by not knowing which box I had packed my art supplies in. Also I was finishing a freelance job and working full time. Eventually I set up my office and managed to get one more drawing out.

Folktober 31st – some kinda fairy thing?

I managed to complete 21 illustrations and do about 3 others of very QUESTIONABLE quality. I learned a few things over the month:

  • It’s cool to have a little record of the month and see the quality jump around.
  • People often say drawing is a like a muscle and to get better you should do it every day. This is true.
  • It’s fine to draw trash. Nobody cares.
  • Time and patience can make your work way better.
  • Spending all of Sunday prepping your meals it the best way to free up a LOT of time.

I’m using the momentum from Folktober to complete some other more ambitious illustrations from earlier in the year. If you want to see the drawing that didn’t make it into this post you’ll have to check my Instagram.

Frog Dance GIF

Junk

I made this Gif today because Adelaide is in lockdown and I didn’t have much else to do (kind of). It was made in Adobe Animate in kind of a traditional pipeline. It’s a dance move that I tried out in a Twitch Aerobics Class by Grumble Wish this morning that I think is called something like Frog Legs or Froggie. Either way, I did it badly and thought if I tried to animate it, maybe in the process I’d figure out how to do it properly. Did it help? I’ll know tomorrow when I try it again! GIF’s are fun to make because they are kind of the language of the internet. I have a Giphy account that I am not totally sure what to do with.

Anyway I’m not sure what you’re expecting from this post BUT because you took the time to read it here is some BEHIND THE SCENES steps of the gif process!

So I basically watched the movement a million times and just made a little armature that is doing the movement with a big thick stroke. Normally I draw armatures but for tweening a stroke made it way easier for a dance movement because I could easily isolate and offset the movements where I needed to. That’s all done with the purple stick person. When I was happy with that I drew in the rough version of the movement overtop, that’s the middle one. Then I cleaned it all up and tried to make it a little more squashy and stretchy, add a bit more drag etc. Normally I do this in the previous step but I was really only intended to be a small GIF so I was fine doing it in clean up.

EDIT: Oh it got shared by the person who inspired it.

Oh, No! It’s Devo. LP Cover

Design


Sadly this was not officially commissioned by the band Devo. I’m doing the Ghost Shrimp Illustration Workshop to expand my illustration portfolio a little. A few weeks ago everyone picked an album they liked and re-envisioned the artwork. I’m a big Devo fan and went with ‘Oh, No! It’s Devo!’ which is VERY fun musically but sardonic lyrically. I wanted to translate that into an illustration using colour and storytelling over a single image. I also wanted it to stand out in a pile of records where someone would pick it up and ask, “Umm… What the hell is this one?” If you are wondering the same thing, listen to ‘That’s Good’ from this album because it SLAPS!