Jenny from the Art Elements team launched the new theme challenge at the beginning of this month, Selkies and the sea.
Not an easy challenge! It wasn't hard to find references to the selkie lore, those mystical creatures that live off the coast of Orkney and come ashore removing their seal skins and walking amongst the people as one of their own. There are many stories surrounding the selkies and I have read widely on them, both in wonderful romantic fiction novels where you lose yourself in the words and are transported to the wild shores of the Shetland isles and also the more traditional fairy tale or folk lore that surrounds them.
I have loved the works of Brian Froud in whose art that depicts the fairies and more magical creatures of our richly woven history of Celtic tales he has given form to those which may.. or not.. have ever existed. As well as many other artists works of selkie genre. That didn't make it any easier for me to come up with some thing unique to this challenge. I dabbled a bit with the glass (above) and my little selkie girl was born in the flame.
I doodled 'endlessly' during the evenings in my sketchbook....
using my imagination to create a seal like creature that was uniquely 'my' selkie...
...the many pages I filled in my sketchbooks but still the idea just wouldn't flow....
So I wrote a small .. and unfinished.. story and had the idea to create a small story book dummy for this project but I never got round to finishing it but maybe you can tell the story with your own words using these thumbnail sketches that are the preliminary doodles for my story.
I hope you will join in and follow the blogs below that belong to those that took part in this theme challenge, I am intrigued to see the ideas that this theme generated as it wasn't the easiest challenge but then they are the ones that push you out of your comfort zone and whether you finish them or not you might push yourself to travel a different path......
Guests:
AE team:
