Friday, December 31, 2010

Prayer against the plague – stories from the sketchbook

Year 2011 starts soon and we are approaching to the year 2012 - do we need a prayer for that time? Are we waiting for something scary in 2012? Apocalypse is near? In the dark Middle Ages, plague was raging - some thought that the prayer will help. But prayer is weak against that scourge. Here are some funny drawings from my sketchbook about this serious topic – the plague.

Sketchbook drawing #1 / pencil, fine liner with black and blue gel ink

“Plague is eaten all! Thanks plague!”


Sketchbook drawing #2 / pencil, fine liner with black gel ink
 “Prepare yourself, you people! Repent! Apocalypse is coming!”


Sketchbook drawing #3 / pencil, fine liner with black gel ink
“Don't say a prayer for me now
Save it 'til the morning after…” – (Duran Duran, Save a Prayer)

Illustration / pencil, fine liner and digital coloring
Once, the plague eating people, now we are the plague - the plague of this planet. And as long as the planet Earth do not find a way to get rid of people - Cheers!
A little weird post to start the new year, right?
Edge wish you all the best in the new year!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Steampunk Reloaded

A few weeks ago I got the book Steampunk Reloaded. This is one of many books edited by fantastic Vandermeer couple (Ann and Jeff), and I ‘m honored that can be part of such projects. There are two of my illustrations in the book.

A Secret History of Steampunk / 362 page / Illustration of crazed inventor

A Secret History of Steampunk / 373 page / The inventor much changed...
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded is an anthology of 23 stories published by Tachyon Publications.

Drawing / pen and watered ink – digitally textured


Demon Bestiarium – background story

Illustration / mixed media / photoshop 5.5
This illustration was actually planned for my art book project  Lexicon of Art Legions (my master work on Academy of Arts in Novi Sad – Demonology as an alternative aesthetics). A great text for this Lexicon wrote my friend Zoran Penevski, and the book was conceived as a modern bestiary. “Bestiaries are free interpretations that do not have their natural role models. They are abstract type catalogs…”

Sketch / Pencil. pen and watered ink
Illustration of demon Bestiarium remained unpublished until now. Now you have the opportunity to see the sketch and the finished color illustration.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Unfinished Art – Banished Demons


When I illustrated this book, mostly I did it with pen and watered ink. Then I scanned the drawings and use digital coloring in Photoshop or Painter. Several illustrations are the product of digital painting techniques, from beginning to (almost) end. Left a lot of unfinished illustrations created for the book. Here are some of them – watch carefully, and you can see the work process…

Digital painting / RealBristle Brushes / Corel Painter X
People talked that dogheads do a terrible things – eat people, especially children, female breast, dig bodies out of graves and eat them.


Sketch / Pencil, pen and watered ink
Dogheads and frightened children… This sketch was done for the Dogheads story which is basically a very similar to the story about Hansel and Gretel. According to the Serbian version, children are lost in the woods and find the lair / cave where lives Doghead mother-witch and Doghead giant …


Sketch / Pencil, pen and watered ink
 Karakondzula rides all night long…


Digital painting / RealBristle Brushes / Corel Painter X

Baba Roga and lost kid (Hansel without Gretel)...

Thursday, December 2, 2010

FIRST POST

"First born kittens thrown into the water" - Serbian proverb.
I hope that my first post (kitten), thrown in the water of the Internet, find the way to the audience who likes this kind of art ...

A few months ago I was involved in illustrating a book about Serbian mythology called Serbian Expelled Demons or Banished Demons.
The book was written by Milenko Bodirogić.
Beside me on this project as illustrators also participated Petar Meseldžija, Dragan Bibin, Miloš Vujanović i Vanja Todorić. With the visual aspect, this book represents a kind of illustration brand of Arts Academy in Novi Sad. All the illustrators in some way related to the same institution – Meseldžija studied painting at the Academy of Novi Sad, Miloš (Anatomical drawing) and Ivica (Graphics Books & Comics ) are the lecturers. Bibin and Vanja are master students.
The book preview (PDF) : http://www1.datafilehost.com/d/fab17469


The second tome of Serbian Mythology Banished Demons

Here are some of my illustrations and text explanations from the book:


Service Ghost

This creature is a little man, no bigger than your thumb, dressed only in trousers and with a red cap on his head. His hands are very skilled and lucky and with them he manages to achieve all the desires of his master. The creature would fulfill all the tasks that are put out before him, only if a man, his master, treats him nicely.
Service ghosts are forced to collect more gold, and gold is a drink of thirsty man …





















Baba Roga (Grandma Horn)

Baba Roga is old, as grandmothers usually are, and ugly. The description of her ugliness goes like this: toothless mouth, long hooked nose, a hunchback, large ears, bony hands and fingers with long nails, torn, ragged clothing, and a horn on top of her forehead. That is why she is called Baba Roga – Grandma Horn.
 
  
 Serbian Baba Roga is similar to the Russian Baba Yaga. But this is not the same creature. 


According to beliefs, the child of Baba Roga grows under her armpit.



Baba Roga visit children at night. Cover them when they are cold, and cleans heir forehead covered with sweat from their heavy dreams and nightmares …


Karakondzula 

Serbian Karakondzula has a human form - she is old and skinny women, with long messy hair, long nails... Karakondzula attack Serbian housewife's with a cauldron dropping on the victim’s head.


Fat Karakondzula especially like to ride drunk people.


Unbaptized creatures

 
Unbaptized creatures are children who died before baptism, before being named, and as they say: "he who has no name, does not exist"… They appear at night, in the form of birds.




Werewolf

There is a belief among Serbian Folk that the unborn child of dead pregnant woman can become a werewolf. This happens when an animal passes over the grave of a pregnant women.


The vampire has a human form and he has no shadow. Werewolf has a wolf form and shadow of man.


Werewolves possessed incredible power. It was rumored among the people that werewolves can swallow the sun or the moon - this is known to us as the eclipse of the sun and the moon.


Some magicians can change ordinary person into a werewolf for some time. This creature has a wolf form and human consciousness, during this period he suffers a lot.


Butcher from the Story about night riders (Todors)


Dogheads

As their name clearly states, these creatures have the body of a human and the head of a dog, with strong teeth and just one big eye in their head. They understand human language, but there was never a single case  or testimony that stated that a dog head ever spoke the human language.

More illustrations from the book you can see on my Behance profile: http://www.behance.net/IvicaStevanovic