The dwarfs are back

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I recently made a trip to Wrocław, Poland. My friends live there, so I am a regular guest of the city.

When in Wrocław, I have one favorite quest. I am looking for dwarfs. Small monuments are all around the city, over 300 of them! It’s a funny seek-and-hide game.

Each time I visit, they inspire me for something new. I was drawing dwarfs for the travel guide at the beginning of my illustration career. I was writing a fairytale about the city of dwarfs for the publishing competition in 2021. It was later aired on the national radio. This time dwarfs are back as an illustration for social media.

Vulnerable soul behind the layers of toughness

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A colleague at my former workplace once took a long sick leave due to severe health problems caused by stress.

Another colleague confessed to me a couple of days later how ashamed she felt. They talked just the day before and she could not recognise that person might have needed support.

I also spent a day in training with that colleague just a couple of weeks earlier. She seemed like the most cheerful and confident person. I really could not sense she was going through the hard times.

Reading someone’s soul is a magical skill.

Some people seem week and are willing to verbalise it, but they can turn out to be surprisingly resistant to all the storms in their lives.

Others look calm and tough, but you never know what fire can be burning them down from the inside. Their “I am fine” does not always mean they are.

I wish I had this magical skill.

I am on YouTube! (again)

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If you are around for a while, you might remember that I had a channel on Youtube. It still exists, but I say “had” because I did not upload anything there for over a year.

YouTube was always a big milestone for me as a creative.

I found so many great artists through it. Since my Day-1 in illustration they have been a great source of learning and inspiration, both in bad times and in good times. I wanted to join this art community and share my own creative journey as well. Maybe it can help someone too.

The tricky part is that video was never my format. I love drawing, I love writing, but I never was interested in filming. I am not very comfortable in talking to camera or making voiceovers. I have always been making the type of art which did not require me to stand there next to it when the audience was coming.

So during COVID I finally gathered up caurage, launched my channel and started posting my first timelapse and speedpaint videos. It was actually a pre-launch. The idea was that I will start adding vlogs as I will be gradually learning more about filming and editing. That time it did not stick. The launch never happened.

This summer I have a bit more time for personal projects and I decided to use part of it for my YouTube re-launch. For the past few weeks I have been learning to constatnly remember to make videos for vlogs wherever I go. I am also learning some video editing skills, which currently still seems like a forbidden magic spell.

I hope that before the end of the summer I’ll gain enough skill and caurage to make some new types of videos for my channel. For now I am sharing a drawing process video. I hope you like it!

Follow the below link to watch

Thanks for watching!

A.

Hello, June

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June in Krakow is always magical.

I absolutely love the city from April till September each year. (For the other half of the year I feel like packing my things and moving away to warmer sunnier places though).

For the past few days I was slowly preparing myself for the new larger personal project.

In the next months I will be working on the new picture book! I am now at the ideation phase.

With all the bad news coming from the war, I want this book to be a pleasent and safe place for a child’s mind to escape to. So regardless of the plot, I want to fill it with positive energy, wonders and enough details to capture one’s attention for long.

Let’s cast a spell!

A.

The dwarfs on the market

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Last year I wrote few fairytales for a Ukrainian publisher’s contest. One of them was about dwarfs preparing the Christmas market for their town.

Few days before New Year I got contacted by national radio. They wanted to read my tale on their children’s program on the New Year’s Eve.

We listened to it all together that evening. It was read out nicely by an actor, with a lot of special effects in the back. It was a first time in years when I felt that New Year’s Eve is full of magic indeed.


Above is an illustration to that story.

Can you find all seven dwarfs hiding on the Market?

Beside  the house,  the  cherry’s  flowering…

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An illustration to a Ukrainian classic poem

Beside  the house,  the  cherry’s  flowering…

(“Sadok vyshnevyj kolo khaty”)

Beside  the house,  the  cherry’s  flowering,
Above  the  trees  the  May  bugs  hum,
The ploughmen  from  the furrows  come,
The  girls  all  wander  homeward,  singing,
And  mothers  wait  the  meal  for  them.
Beside  the  house,  a  family  supper,
Above,  the  evening  star  appears,
The  daughter  serves  the  dishes  here;
I t’s  useless  to  advise  her,  mother.
The  nightingale  won’t  let  her  hear.
Beside  the house,  the  mother  lulls
The  little  children  for  the  night,
Then she,  too,  settles  a t  their  side.
And  all  is  s till. . .   Only  the  girls
And  nightingales  disturb  the  quiet.

Taras Shevchenko
“Sadok vyshnevyj kolo khaty”
(“Садок вишневий коло хати”)
1847

Translated by Vera Rich

Wimmelbuch – Search and find

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This illustration was a personal project made in 2021.


I wanted to recreate the imaginary fantasy bubble I lived in as a child. 
Thus the world created here includes all types of fairytale and cartoons characters/scenes, Slavic mythology and children books creatures – all the magic that surrounded me growing up in a post-soviet Ukrainian province of 90s.



It is a blend of inspirations coming from local folktales, as well as internationally known fairytales, soviet cartoons and Slavic myths.


Below I’ll list all the references, let’s see if you can find all 36! 🙂

The list:


1. A dragon guarding his treasures

2. Witches having shabash on the Lysa Hora (Barren mount)

3. Witches riding brooms on the way to the shabash

4. A dragon attacking the castle

5. Rapunzel in the tower

6. Cinderella on her way to the ball

7. Cinderella’s shoe

8. Mermaids from Slavic myths

9. Mavkas (tree spirits) from Slavic myths

10. Princess frog

11. Red riding hood

12. Will-o’-the-wisp (ghost lights from myths)

13. Thumbelina

14. Queens’ roses from Alice in the Wonderland

15. Wild rose from Sleeping Beauty

16. Kotyhoroshko (a pea-sized superhero from Ukrainian folktale)

17. Flower from Beauty and the beast

18. Ugly duckling

19. Baba Yaga

20. Little straw bull (Ukrainian folktale)

21. The glove (Ukrainian folktale)

22. The fisherman and the magic goldfish

23. The duck (which laid and egg with the world, Slavic mythology)

24. The house with chicken legs

25. Ivasyk-Telesyk (a boy-fisherman from Ukrainian folktale)

26. Baron Munchausen

27. Puss in boots

28. The Enormous Turnip (folktale)

29. Fairy Tinker Bell

30. Kossak Mamay (Ukrainian legend)

31. Kolobok (running round bread from Ukrainian folktale)

32. Leshy (Old father of forest, Slavic mythology)

33. Old wise raven (Soviet cartoons)

34. A house made of gingerbread, cake and candy

35. The death of Koschei (god of death, folktale, his death is in the needle, hidden in the egg, hidden in the duck, hidden in the rabbit, hidden in the box, hidden on the tree)

36.  The beast stealing the moon (Gogol’s fairytale About Ukrainian village during Christmas Eve)

37. Dwarfs


Have you find them all? 🙂

Escaping reality

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Twenty years ago I had a habit of diving into the imaginary worlds whenever I did not like something about the real one.

When it was boring, when atmosphere was not so good or when I was upset or disappointed – I just was escaping into that other world. It was fun.

From the outside I looked quite absent-minded during those trips into imaginary universe. I know it from the classmates – they used to name it my Astral.

Over time I lost this habit. A lot was going on as I was adapting to new life abroad, taking on international internships and learning to be adult. No time to float into alternative worlds.

As I started shifting back to creative path 6 years ago, one of the biggest challenges was actually to find that Door to the world of imagination. It took years. I learnt that skill anew, but it did not become as strong of a habit as it once was. It was a tool.

Until last month. When my home country got invaded and as I continued to observe the horrible reality of war at my doorstep, I once again took that Door for what it once was. Not the entry into the world of imagination, but the escape from the real world.

Art is the escape.

Stand with Ukraine

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I have not thought I would get to experience this in my life.

The country which I love so dearly is on fire.

The past week was the longest in my life. It is heartbreaking.

The support of the World during this week was what helped to get through it. And it reminds me that despite of such horrible things like War humanity has also a lot of good things to offer.

Thank you, World, for standing with Ukraine ♥️

Windy days

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Despite strong wind I had to spend a lot of time outside yesterday. The weather in Europe has been crazy in the past weeks and seems it will remain this way for a while.

I am just counting days until spring.