Artists and illustrators: The Fruit Tree Foundation needs you!

You may recall that last year the Fruit Tree Foundation brought together a stellar array of Scottish songwriting and recording talent to make an album and series of gigs in support of the Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. You should do, we put them on the cover and the music that came out of the project was braw. Well, this year they’ve expanded the project, and created a mentoring programme bringing together three unsigned and three established songwriters (James Yorkston, Withered Hand and Rod Jones) to collaborate in the studio, record and perform their work. All three of the successful applicants, and their mentors, will perform at a Fruit Tree Foundation gig in Edinburgh on 20 October. An EP featuring a song by each of the Fruit Tree mentees will also be available to download from The Skinny website.

You’ll be able to read all about it (including exclusive access to the recording sessions themselves) in an upcoming issue of The Skinny. In the mean time, the Fruit Tree Art Department are looking for a bit of help with the artwork for the EP.

Says Fruit Tree's Astrid Johnston, "We are inviting you to play ‘consequences’ aka ‘heads, bodies and legs’ with a fruit tree, and then send us your version of one section of the tree. Three of the entries will be put together to form a whole tree and used for the EP; we’ll have a gallery with all the ‘consequences’ on The Skinny website.

"We are interested in hearing from artists, photographers or anyone else who would like to participate (Sunday painter or professional). No particular experience necessary.

"You can download our template here or paste it from below (it's A4).

"Please read below which of the sections you should be drawing (otherwise we might end up with lots of middles of the tree, and no tops and bottoms!)"

The deadline is 13 October 2011. Send your entries to fruittreeart@gmail.com

Which section of the fruit tree? Take the second digit of your age and look at the groups below. If the second digit is zero then use the first digit instead.

Ages ending in: 1, 4, 7 - The top of the tree

Ages ending in: 2, 5, 8 - The middle of the tree

Ages ending in: 3, 6, 9 - The bottom of the tree (and any roots - up to you).

How to Enter

• You must be aged 16 or over (no upper age limit!). 

• Send entries to fruittreeart@gmail.com along with your: full name, address, telephone number, date of birth and any URL of your work (so that we can use it on our gallery).

• Your entry must reach us by 5pm 13 October 2011.

• Digital submissions only, unless you have contacted us in advance.

• Digital submissions should be 300 dpi.

• Follow our instructions above as to which section of the tree you should work on.

• You must work from our template, which is 595 px wide x 630 px high (21x22 cm).

• You can use any 2d media, computer generated or otherwise (drawing, painting, illustration,collage/photo collage or digital graphics are all fine).

• You don’t have to follow the exact outline of the tree in our template, just make sure that what you are doing matches up where the red crosses are.

• Please don’t add in a background, just the tree itself and anything that might be growing on or living in/around it. We’ll need to be able to ‘cut-out’ the tree and any bits and pieces on the ground/in the air around it.