Folktale Week 2022
The first story I landed upon when flipping was The Black Tulip, a tale which has been extracted from Alexandre Dumas’ novel of the same name. Written in 1850 as a work blending historical fiction with real events, it tells how Cornelius van Baerle left a seafaring life while young and became a tulip fancier, studying how to produce various colors and varieties of tulips. A prize is announced to the one who can create a black tulip, and Cornelius sets to work. His neighbor Mynheer, also a tulip grower, is envious and watches his every move. This only hurts him, as he no longer has time to work on his tulip development processes.
It’s heeerre, folks… FOLKTALE WEEK!
Are you in? This is the first year I have fully participated in this instagram art challenge. Other years I dabbled around because I was working on other projects. It’s not too late to join as posting is from Monday, November 14 til Sunday, the 20th. If you’d like to know how I go about making my images, read on.
The prompts felt a little too Halloweenish to me and I wanted to draw a story which was pretty rather than scary, so I read through an old book of Dutch folk tales given to me by my grandmother when I was in college. It was published in 1926, and has gorgeous illustrations throughout.
After creating a mood board I began by listing all the prompts and then I figured out what parts of the story corresponded to the prompts. Since Fool and Tree were the first 2 prompts, and were in the same scene in this folktale, I combined them. Since Cornelius spent a lot of time in his “tulip lab” it made sense to make the 2nd prompt bulbs. I sketched out designs as they popped in my head for as many prompts as possible, but skipped this for prompt 1 and prompt 8 - the beginning and end images, and went straight to drawing linework.
My color palette, which went through some revisions.
After drawing the final line drawings for all 8 images I put on some podcasts and began coloring, trying out various color ways before settling on this one.
Now you know my process. Yes, these pictures did take a lot of thought and time, but I really enjoyed the process. I realize that I don’t make “modern” picture books, rather I like history and culture, and tend to illustrate stories which take us back in time.
I hope you liked this post. If so, please follow me on Substack! I hope you are encouraged to create beautiful art! What will you draw this week?