Hey everyone, we're back with a new challenge! This time, our theme is 'TALES'.

Do you have a favourite tale from your childhood? Or a fairy tale you would love to draw? Draw it for us! Illustrate any tale, draw your favourite character, and tell us about it when you post your artwork! Deadline is June 16th! Have fun with Inkscape!

Instructions/Information...

1. Please read the rules.

2. If you want to post work-in-progress images, create a thread in the WIP folder, and post your images there. When you're finished, post the final image in this thread.

3. The challenge will run from 04 - 16 June. There are no winners. These challenges are intended to inspire you, and encourage you to share your work with us.

4. You're encouraged to join in the discussion and offer your thoughts and feedback, but please be friendly and respectful. Constructive criticism is fine, trolling/abuse is not. We all want to learn and improve, so let's support each other in doing that.

5. Most importantly, be creative and have fun!

(Header image/text credit to the Inkscape group on Facebook)

This is my entry, just in time too!

Super nice work, @doctormo It's deliciously creepy!

Sadly, I didn't have time to join in with this challenge. I hope myself and others can join in the next one!

Hungarian Folk Tales: The Little Pig and the Wolves

It's challenging to illustrate the complete  tale in just one image. Yet alone illustrate a tale from scratch. 

So this time went with recreating a screen capture from our most well-known cartoonist, Marcell Jankovics's cartoon series, which cartoon is still very popular here and you can catch it on tv (first episode was aired in 1988).

The full Hungarian Folk Tales series can be watched here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4IHjMTbstJlt5vO181UWEQ

More than for the challenge, as a hommage since Marcell Jankovics passed away just recently, in 29 May 2021.

Was a bit lazy and only drew the scene which captures the style of the series. 

Here is the entire tale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=890utwxKACE

Other cartoons Jankovics worked on included -to name a few:

Johnny Corncob https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voVvWG4u18k

Sisyphus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYBlAon683s

The struggle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T9sNE7FErk

Son of the White Mare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohv88J2WKsg

The Tragedy of Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcD0IKaZUaY

oh and he had taken part in creating Gustavus too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA9vnHCRrAk

Nice work, Lazur, and thanks for joining in. Good recreation of the scene.

Hello everybody, 

again cool image, Martin and Lazur.

I wanted to do an image about "Krabat", which isn't a fairy tale in the old meaning of the term, but a book with a fairy tale structure. 
It is about a young guy, traveling over a high snowy mountain ridge to find a sorcerer. He there learns to become a sorcerer himself, only to find out that the old sorcerer has a deal with death himself. 

I didn't have the time to finish the image, but though that I could share at least how far I came. 

Hm, doesn't show up like it looks on my laptop. the middle mountain lost its outlne and the background seems to be slightly slipped. I'll try again with a different save. 

Must have been a problem with my cutout mask. Now it seems to be working. 

@mondspeer I like that a lot! Lovely subtle colour gradients. 👍

@Lazur thanks for sharing the video. It reminds me a lot of the Gruffelo. Not sure why. Although in modern thinking you'd question if the wolf was even a bad wolf at first, we have nothing to think the wolf is bad at first and the pig deliberately engages the wolf when he just didn't need to. Perhaps it can now be seen as an allegory about posting a reply to a twitter troll 🤣

@doctormo  

Didn't know Gruffelo! Will check that out. 

Had doubts if my specific illustration may resemble Pohádky pod sněhem, which was a series from 1986s from the late Czechoslovakia. 

Have no idea what its creators were on about. Although here they are quite well known as well, however couldn't find an english wiki page on that series. 

Here is an example episode on that one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sDdm_bveQw 

The main characters wooden log house may show a bit of resemblance. The story? I'm absolutely not familiar with any meaning behind. Personally doesn't know that series much more than their existence.

Folk tales here have a strict symbolism. Some described it's related to the Zodiac  and/or a specific time of the year, but every character in folk tales have their own nature just like an epithet. 

In hungarian that's "ordas" for the wolf, which can be translated as harmful, destructive, dangerous. And also in the tales he is rather ignorant. 

Unlike the fox, which is always considered "ravasz", as being bright, wise or tricky in translation, despite he is usually a bad character too. 

Like there was a Hollywood ananimation film of how to train your dragon -in these folk tales dragons are always fighted and beheaded by the hero. It's a different cultural heritage.

Have to dig  more into the zodiac meaning though. It is in parallel to the chinese one, divided into 30 moon houses and the meaning is related to the specific nature of a time of the year. 

In this case, the little pig represents Taurus and the wolf the beginning of Aries. 

The tree represents the Milky Way, and in fact it crosses the Eclyptic at Taurus which allows the pig to climb the tree, but not the wolf.

These folk tales tend to  have a meaning behind or rather meanings on more levels. 

For one it teaches not to  be careless when it starts spring and act as you would be in the middle of April or you'll face the consequences. 

The wolf is getting it -"ráfázik"-in hungarian, which translates roughly "he is catching it", while it is also meaning that he is getting frostbitten. Makes more sense in that context. 

Sadly this kind of knowledge is no more natural understanding of the wide public as it was at the time the tales originated and we must re-learn what we inherited. 

Guess the "how to train your dragon" tales had better marketing.

Old meanings for things get lost a great deal. It's not good, nor bad, it just is. Wolves were eliminated from England by the 1500s, so we don't have the same cultural attachment to wolves. There must have been many tales that have been lost over the years. Just like how to train your dragon will one day be forgotten too.