Showing posts with label woods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woods. Show all posts

Thursday, November 7, 2019

#Folktaleweek Picks of Day 3: "Path"

IG @antje_arning_illustration
What is #FolktaleWeek and #FolktaleWeek2019? You can read all about it HERE and see a sampling of the myriad mediums and styles being created in. You can also see a small selection of the MANY posts that appeared Monday for the prompt of HOME HERE, and many more for the prompt yesterday of SECRET HERE.

Today's prompt is PATH.

Note: For today's prompt we expected lots of Hansel & Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Pied Piper, yellow brick roads, mazes, and fairy tale maps. There were quite a few maps -but all very different, lots of H&G, some LRRH, and lots of characters going through the woods. There were also a few wardrobes, folks following enchanted string or skeins of wool, and quite a few variations on The Cowherd and the Weaver Maiden, which was great to see. 

Again, we chose for different styles, unusual scenes of known tales and most often, lesser-known tales wonderfully done.

Enjoy - artist credits, and any pertinent notes made by them for their work, are below each image.
IG @madebysmitty
Artist comment: Day 3 of Folktale Week 2019! - Prompt: PATH .Have you ever been faced with a time in your life when the path home was as dark as the path away from home?
IG @jillysketches
Artist comment: day 3 - "path" - This is, of course, based on the Town Musicians of Brennan. It was so fun to work on but I'm afraid I went a little overboard and the final product suffers from a lack of focus. It's quite hard to read but at least I had a good time 😂
IG @hollyhallillustrations
Artist comment: Day three of #FolktaleWeek - #Path Padstow in #cornwall, England, holds an incredibly special place in my heart. I’ve been there more times than I can count, have more memories than I can remember and have always loved it there... I’ve even had a pint or two of Doom Bar... but I didn’t know what the ‘doom bar’ was before last month! - The tale goes, that a mermaid once guided ships through a safe path, into Padstow harbour... now this is where the tale gets muddled, but whether a jilted love interest, a survivor of her obsessive love and attempted drowning, or a case of mistaken identity, the mermaid was shot and killed by a sailor... in her rage and betrayal, she sought revenge and cursed the harbour of Padstow with a ‘doom bar’ of sand, that destroyed many a ship. . In my version, she becomes the doom bar herself, forever watching over her beloved harbour 🧜‍♀️ .
IG @theworkbookart
Artist comment: N/A
IG @hannahjdyson
Artist comment: Folktale week Day 3. Prompt was ‘Path’. So... when the full moon arrives the Sugar loaf troll transforms into an owl and is shown the pathway through the woods by his feathered friends 
IG @katie_messenger_illustrat
Artist comment: Folktale week day 3. Third prompt is path. This is Hansel and Gretel, who taken into the woods by their scheming stepmother, leave a trail of breadcrumbs to mark the path home. The birds really really liked this idea. .
IG @segui_le_briciole
Artist comment: [La strada verso casa / The way home]~Folktale Week / day three: path
IG @vikapozum
Artist comment: Day3. „Path“. Folktale rule: you never know what is waiting for you on your way. Just follow the path and let things happen.
IG @toriboard
Artist comment: Day 3 of #folktaleweek2019 prompt: path - I’ve gone for a well known fairytale for this one. I always found the original so sinister so I was trying to capture atmosphere in this one 😊
IG @airedi
Artist comment: Day 3 promt #folktaleweek2019 -Path. This time I decided to illustrate Latvian mithological godess Laima. In folklore she is a godess oh human destiny. And she is the one who makes a decision about the path that a human will go... 
IG @fairydailytales
Artist comment: One of my favorite is a series about an Indonesian favorite trickster “Kancil” (a deer mouse). Running away from her first trick “victim” the tiger, Kancil found herself stuck at the edge of a river that is also a home to a family of crocodiles. More sharp teeth doesn’t scare her. She told the hungry crocodiles that a King is having a party and she was assigned to count how many crocodiles in this river, so that they can share some left over food party for them. Then she asked the crocodile family to line up and let her jump on their back while she counts them. She also made them promised not to eat her, otherwise the king would not know how many crocodiles are there. So that was exactly what the crocodiles did, they lined up neatly while Kancil happily “counting” and hopping from one crocodile’s back to the other until she reached the other side of the river.
IG @annifduluth
Artist comment: The prompt for day three is Path. This illustration is based on a Mi’kmaq story of how the rabbit gave the moon it’s markings.
IG @patzifatz
Artist comment: Day 3 of #Folktaleweek2019! Today's prompt is path. And if you've been following Vasilisia's story (if you haven't. check my last two posts - go on, I'll wait...) ⏳📖⏳ So as I was saying, you know that Vasilisia's stepmother wasn't very fond of her (actually she detested the poor girl). So one night, when Vasilisia's father was travelling for work, she demanded of the girl to go out into the woods and find fire. She basically kicked poor Vasilisia out of the house, threatening to beat her black and blue if she dared return without fire. Being the brave girl that she was, Vasilisia put on her mother's old cloak, hid her little doll in it, and set off. Where exactly she would find fire, she didn't know. When she did step out into the woods however, a moonlit path appeared in front of her, leading her through the trees, deep into the darkness of the forest. And at the end of that path, almost all the way by the snow covered mountains that hid the horizon, there was a little hut. So that's where Vasilisia set off to go, following the path, her eyes set firmly on the hut, her fingers clutching the doll in her pocket, her heart hammering in her chest... TO BE CONTINUED
IG @mello.dee
Artist comment: Third day of the Folktale Week is “Path”🍂🍁🍂 "They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong downhill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church." - I always loved the "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in Disney's and Tim Burton's interpretations, but read this story only this year Autumn. There is a special seasonal atmosphere in it, so the reading was pure pleasure. - Headless horsemen were part of the many cultures storytelling - German, Irish, Scandinavian and English. The famous gothic story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by American author Washington Irving was based on the folktale by German folklorist Karl Musäus
IG @nastiamintwind
Artist comment: Day 3. The path. - A thorny and intriguing journey is to follow the red yarn of your warm pressured heart.
IG @noteswithscribbles
Artist comment: The king hides his children from his new wife so well that he relies on a ball of yarn unwinding through the forest as his #path. I imagined him so desperate to keep every bit of this yarn that he carefully winds it back up as he goes there, and never notices his horse already knows the way. {Ed: Yes! This is The Six Swans! Love that someone used the yarn to follow a path]
IG @mariebllmnn
Artist comment: And the third prompt for #folktaleweek2019 is PATH. I wanted to draw the Rübezahl of germanic, czech and polish folklore. He is a waldschrat (woodwose), a mountain spirit of the Riesengebirge (krkonose mountains). He is described as being ambigous: helping good and poor or lost people, while also being a trickster and revengeful.
IG @curiouszhi
Artist comment: Day 3: PATH - Today's piece is from a Chinese 🇨🇳 folktale "牛郎织女" (Pinyin: Niú Láng Zhī Nü, English: The Cowherd and Weaver Maiden) which is the legend behind Chinese Valentine's Day, also known as Qi Xi Festival. It's about two star-crossed lovers who reunite once a year on a path / bridge formed by magpies in the heavenly skies. - Creative notes: I did a literal interpretation of the 'meeting on the magpie bridge' scene here. Simplified the backdrop to just the moon and clear skies as my original sketch with a bunch of swirly chinese-style clouds got too busy. - Story: A cowherd (Niu Lang) met a weaving maiden (Zhi Nu) who is the daughter of the Goddess of Heaven. They fell in love, got married and had 2 children, all without the knowledge of her mother. When the Goddess found out that her daughter married a mortal, she had Zhi Nu taken back to Heaven. When Niu Lang and the children went to Heaven searching for her (via some magical cow hide 🐂), the Goddess created a giant Heavenly River (aka the Milky Way 😄) in a rage to separate them. However, their love for each other moved all the magpies in the human world so much that they all flew up to Heaven to form this path over the river so that Niu Lang and Zhi Nu could meet on the magpie "bridge". In the end, the Goddess herself was moved and allowed them to be reunited on the magpie bridge on that same day every year (7th day of the 7th month in the lunar calendar - "Qi Xi"). This day is still celebrated as the Chinese Valentine's Day every year. 💖
IG @teacupsandspectacles
Artist comment: Here’s my “path” piece for #folktaleweek2019. Whew! This is far more complicated than anything I’ve ever attempted before! The story Snow White and Rose Red has always been a favourite of mine. Because there are so many locations mentioned, I decided to try a map! It was fun to create the frame/wreath and tie in objects from the story. I also want to live in this cottage — it looks so snug! •
IG @olya.luki
Artist comment: N/A
IG @kolkerpics
Artist comment: N/A
IG @zoki.art
Artist comment: Hello guys! Today is day 3 of #folktaleweek Prompt for today is: PATH - For this topic, I decided on the Slovenian story ''Zvezdica Zaspanka'' -  The Sleepy Twinkle Star.  It was written by Fran Milčinski - Ježek in 1952. It was the first Slovenian radio play and has been performed as a puppet theatre play. Later it was published as a book story. It remains one of the most popular children's stories in Slovenia and it was also one of my favorites when I was a kid and I still love to read it to my kids! I hope you will like my interpretation. I have painted the scene where The Moon sent The Sleepy Twinkel Star to Earth.⭐ ''Twinkle Sleepyhead is the youngest star in the sky. Because she constantly comes late to her work, the Moon sends her to Earth to punish her. She may return to the sky when she proves that she has learned her lesson. '' (Wikipedia)
🌙⭐
IG @valeriebentleyart
Artist comment: For #folktaleweek day 3 I chose The Magical Pears, another story from Juan Sauvageau’s, Stories That Must Not Die. If you missed my post yesterday, this book is full of Hispanic folktales from the Rio Grande Valley Region, in South Texas, where I’m from. Today’s prompt was path. In the story 3 brothers head out to take a basket of pears to a king, but only the last boy ends up delivering the intended. For on the path to the castle and old woman curses the first 2 baskets for lying about the contents. 
IG @heycasshey
Artist comment: Day 3 : ➡️ PATH 🔄 For the prompt path I chose another classic from The Brothers Grimm, “The Pied Piper”. We all know it — a greedy piper leads a bunch of mice into a river to drown AND THEN he leads a bunch of kids into a cave and essentially kills them. LOVELY TALE — so I thought I’d wrap it up in a cheerier package!
IG @lou_warwick
Artist comment: Day three of #folktaleweek : PATH. A little map!
IG @amylouillustrations
Artist comment: Day Three : PATH The Pied Piper leading the rats on the path out of the town.
IG @tilsamka
Artist comment: [Ed.: We included Rima Staines' offering as she posted for the event, and is an active folktale artist] Dark Mountain - Rima Staines 2011 - oils on wood - Today's #folktaleweek2019 prompt is PATH. - I find many of my paintings include paths or roads and the many-wheeled and -footed travellers upon them. This painting was done for the Dark Mountain Project back when ecological/civilization collapse was not quite such a openly discussed subject as it is now. - In my imagination this painting is a kind of Pied Piper character leading a raggedy band of misfits down a path into an unknown future, his musical instrument playing a two-way tune...
IG @alexadelaida
Artist comment: PATH 🌲 It's a story, similar to Cinderella, where a girl has to do quite a few impossible tasks to please her step-mother and step-sister. One of them is picking flowers in the middle of winter. While on her journey she meets 12 men sitting around a fire (they keep on reappearing in many Slavic tales) and they help her out.
IG @apolin.art
Artist comment: Day 3: path - Walking by mushroom lake
Ig @putilinakate
Artist comment: N/A [Ed.: Look at all those faces!]
IG @emilyhouse.design
Artist comment: N/A
IG @lillalero
Artist comment: Day 3- PATH for #folktaleweek2019 -from the fairy tale of Little Thumb: “Don't be afraid, brothers. Father and mother have left us here, but I will lead you home again. Just follow me."
They did so, and he took them home by the very same way they had come into the forest.
IG @aliocha.gouverner_art
Artist comment: I was obviously inspired by the patterns from persian carpets for this one 😊.
IG @fieryjane
Artist comment: Day 3: 🚲 PATH 🚲 Through the night park 🍃
IG @willemoever_art
Artist comment: Folktale Week prompt 3: Path - Monstrous caverns, with formations like rotten teeth, were all around him. The echoes of dripping water were thrown back at him so many times it desorientated him. Yet the aching hunger for discovery persisted. Ali wondered how much further this path would lead him down into the bowels of the earth.
IG @kendra_binney
Artist comment: A little more of my made up fairytale for #folktaleweek. Day 3: path. 
IG @kaleigh.ford
Artist comment: N/A
IG @shantala_robinson
Artist comment: The Sprightly Tailor. A folktale about a brave Tailor who was rewarded for spending the night in an abandoned churchyard haunted by a giant.
IG @ul_zak
Artist comment: N/A
IG @nichtlicht
Artist comment: Day 3: PATH - Masha hiding in the basket, so the bear is walking her home without noticing 😊
IG @sveta_solami
Artist comment: And the third topic is "path". The tale is called "Three kingdoms - copper, silver and gold." I admit, I did not know about this tale before. I just searched in which fairy tales the ball of string is mentioned as a guide. And it turned out that such tales are gorgeous. (auto-translated)
IG @arandomcreative
Artist comment: Path - "In this manner they went through ten more rooms, and the last one was filled with the most terrible creatures: Dragons and snakes, toads swollen with poison, basilisks and lindorms. And in each room the bear growled, 
Do not look around!
Neither right nor left,
Straight ahead, and you'll be safe!
The girl trembled and quaked with fear, like the leaves of an aspen, but she remained steadfast and did not look around, neither right nor left. When the door to the twelfth room opened up, a glistening stream of light shone toward the two of them. The most beautiful music sounded from within, and everywhere there were cries of joy.“ - The Little Nuttwig , a german folktale by Ludwig Bechstein
IG @snazzyhues_by_teju_reval
Artist comment: Folktale week DAY3: PATH - Pattern inspired by Japanese folktale “Tanabata”. Story of the weaving maiden and the oxherd, magpies and magic. What a cute little story! 

TOMORROW'S PROMPT IS SMOKE.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Kirsty Mitchell's Fairy Tale "Wonderland" London Exhibition Begins (And A Book On the Way!)


Big news for Kirsty Mitchell fans:
1) she's having a 'selling exhibition' starting TODAY (May 7th) in London for 2(ish) weeks, featuring gorgeous 2 meter prints (6 foot prints for the non-metric folks), that show all the teensy details in each amazing shot

2) she also aims to have a book available of her Wonderland work by the end of THIS YEAR! (ie hopefully ready for Christmas!)

By the end of 2015, she hopes to realize a 'Wonderland' book in collaboration with esteemed British book designer Stuart Smith through the launch of a campaign on Kickstarter backed by the photography platform LensCulture.
(I can hear you cheering from here!)
But back to the exhibition. Here are the details from the press release. I'm including the biography and summary notes about Ms. Mitchell and how this series came to be, for those who don't know much about her work:

Kirsty Mitchell ‘WONDERLAND’
7th – 23rd May 2015
Mead Carney Fine Art, 45 Dover Street, W1S 4FF
The show is kindly sponsored by Nikon UK.

Mead Carney is pleased to present 'Wonderland', a new selling exhibition by award winning fine art photographer Kirsty Mitchell.

'Wonderland' is a project created over the course of five years as an homage to the artist's mother who tragically passed away in 2008.

Having worked in fashion for a number of years, Kirsty understood the constructed and filmic nature of the photographic image. Building on this, she incorporated childlike whim through the creation of her favorite fairytales that her mother read to her as a child. With minimal support and finances, she built what can be likened to a film set in order to stage each frame. The tailor-made dresses and make-up add an element of high fashion into the work. However, props such as ships, headdresses and books transform the image further; each item carefully built and placed so as to convey a personal sense of imagination.

Kirsty's oeuvre is whimsical and dream-like. It consists of over 70 photographs that intertwine fantasy, literature and personal mediations. The selection presented shows the breadth and complexity of the highly constructed artworks. The highly saturated colours give a vivid, fairytale quality to each image. Intense contrasts intensify the surreal quality of each work; reality is undermined by the lack of gravity and soft lighting.

Upon completion in November 2014,  'Wonderland' immediately won 2 international awards, with over 280,000 followers on its social media. It has been extensively featured throughout the world achieving a viral status online, and has been published by prestigious names such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue Italia, The Guardian, BBC news, Germany's Spiegel Online and Stern magazine to name but a few. The images warranted coverage from BBC News, Italian Vogue, and Polish Harper's Bazaar, to name a few. She won a number of awards including the grand prize for visual storytelling by Lensculture in 2014 and a place as the Nikon Ambassador of Fine Art Photography. 
I had to include one of her wonderful behind-the-scenes videos, which I highly recommend for fans, photographers and storytellers alike:
I'm also linking you to her video behind-the-scenes of prepping the ENORMOUS prints for this exhibit. Just amazing stuff. You can watch it HERE, along with finding out extra details about the gallery, the Wonderland show (what will and what will not be shown - only some is shown in the panorama shots below) and her note to fans about the upcoming book.
For those of us who can't see the exhibition, you can see the series at Mitchell's website HERE. And while you're there, I recommend checking out her other galleries too. Some of her personal portraits are truly stunning. (I've also collected a variety on a Pinterest board HERE, along with costume shots and behind the scenes pics, since these photos wouldn't be what they are with all Mitchell's artistry in design, costume and prop making - that's right - she designs and makes them all herself!)
And we'll be keeping our eye on Kickstarter for the rest of the year and cheer this book on to get published. I'd love to see more about the stories behind the photos - not just how the photos were made but which stories told her by her mother inspired which pieces. Clearly there is a fairy tale sensibility here as well as a 'modern-Victorian' faery atmosphere as well, which I would love to hear more about.

And then there's the future. If this is where she journeyed to creatively over five years, we have to wonder: just what amazing things will she do next?!