Happy Folktale Week! I love creating art with stories behind it — real or imagined. And I love seeing what everyone else is drawing, too! This year’s prompts were: Mist, Gate, Blight, Trail, Depth, Bone, and Blossom.
I illustrated Mist using a folk song I wrote for an imaginary future people:
Whispering down from the mountain steeps,
Into the valley it velvety creeps,
Mist dragon.
If you spy it, you’re prey,
But you’ll have one chance
If you can best it in its pouncing dance.
And then you will fly!
Asgaloîc folk song, 5600AD
Then I illustrated all 6 of the other words together, with a legend I wrote. I had so much fun with the poetry and the art!
The Hope Gate Trail
Pass all the settled lowlands,
Wheat-gold plains and river-flowlands,
Into the wild and riven hills,
With opal lakes and skies, until —
You reach the Highland Gates.
For aeons have they lonely stood
One bone, one stone, one withered wood.
The Bone Gate on blight and ruin looks,
The Stone Gate onto blossoms, brooks —
And endless orchard bounty.
Have you chosen yet, or will you hear
Of the Wooden Gate, which many fear?
The forgotten gate, the oft-neglected,
With only you in its depths reflected.
Few go, and none return.
But the oldest stories have a name
For the Wooden Gate. It isn’t Fame,
Nor Fear, nor Wealth, nor Power Won.
The name is just a simple one:
It is the Hope Gate.
Asgaloîc Legend, 6700AD
I hope you enjoy these! I look forward to doing it again next year with new prompts.
#folktaleweek #folktaleweek2024 #kidlit #12x12pb #scbwi
Carrie Schneider Author/Illustrator 