28 OCTOBER

This year's poster for the run-up to Folktale Week, starring Binky the cat
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Yes, Folktale Week on Instagram begins one week today!
Time has flown since the prompts were released and I haven't done anything for them yet, but I made this poster for the occasion. I love the opportunity to invent weird little creatures and have the license to mix them all together to suggest or tell stories of a folksy nature.

The tall green figure which crept into the work I thought of as Long Lankin at first, but Lankin was a murderous fellow who stalked the moors in search of victims. Lankin failed the job interview for this illustration, but an equally long character with lop-sided grin, head in the clouds, wouldn't say Boo to a goose was perfect. I thought he should get married, so I made him a bride! She stands with her bouquet under an oak tree inhabited by another one of my creatures from last year's Folktale Week: a luminous, glow in the dark, green thing, which also appears in the poster.

It is such fun how these creatures come about, and once they creep in they are there for good in my stories! They seem to introduce themselves. The other two cat-like figures in the illustration came about from my bedroom curtains. Prone to idle gazing and pareidolia, about two weeks into the 100 cats project, I saw cats all over them, revealed by morning light glowing through the figured cloth.

The 100 cats project, incidentally, will continue; it had to go on the back burner for a while to make space for the Artobotic machines project, specifically work for the Brexit Art Machine which was on a deadline for the end of the month. Looks like we've had an extension to that now!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

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More can be found on Artobotic vending machines plus pics of the work I have been making for them at The Weekly on my Heather Eliza Walker site.