I finally finished painting my mini story panels for my story for Folktale Week 2023. It’s about a polar bear who gets lost and the mythical fire fox helps him find his way. I don’t know a lot of folktales but knew I really wanted to illustrate a polar bear and the Northern Lights so my inspiration came from a Finnish folktale.

The first panel is the cover the the remaining panels reflect the prompts Lost, Ink, Sea, Sleep, Underground, Illusion and Found.

I used my Winsor Newton watercolor paint palette, indigo for the night sky, ultramarine for the icy water, a mix of Winsor green and indigo for the sparse trees, cerulean blue and Winsor violet for some highlights and colored pencils.

I did a few color tests ahead of time with colored pencils on printer paper to figure out what colors matched the images in my imagination.

I started out with thumbnail sketches in my sketchbook which I inked and transferred to cold press watercolor paper.

Each panel measures 4 inches wide by 3 inches high, which is a great size so it doesn’t take me too long to finish in a reasonable timeframe.

I’m finished writing the text this weekend so now this mini story is ready to go!