Prince Ivan and the Firebird

Another one from last year. I did truly mean to post this back a while ago, but I didn't get round to even scanning it in. This picture illustrates a scene from the most famous of the Russian Firebird stories (the full title of the tale in question is Prince Ivan, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf, though many English-language editions are just called The Firebird). In the scene, Prince Ivan, youngest son of a great tsar, catches one of the Firebird's tail feathers, famed for shining brightly like golden stars.

Some of the feather's outline (created using brown drawing ink and a dip pen) wasn't quite picked up during the scanning, but I have to say that it does perhaps give the feather more of a radiant, mystical feel to it.

The Clever Prince

This is a drawing for a short story idea I came up with about a melancholy yet studious prince. I have yet to fully write the story down, and I doubt that it would ever get published unless I were suddenly to become a highly successful children's author with a stellar list of titles, so this shall be its outlet for the time being.

Bits and bobs: Prince Noname

Yes, it's true. I'm terrible at updating. First of all, I've been busy with other things that this blog has to come pretty low down the priority list. On top of that, I still can't get access to a scanner regularly, and the battery to my SLR has gone poof. I'm returning to the UK for good in a few weeks time, and I hope that the return shall remedy my problem. In the mean time, here's the first part of a few "bits and bobs" - nothing important in particular, just some little sketches and other such things.

This is something I did a few months back, pulled from a sketchbook. It's a quick scribble of a prince or equally aristocratic youth, complete with my attempts at replicating 16th century fashion from memory. I will also admit that it was done to experiment with ink and gouache. I think that I either drew this character as a potential design for a fairy tale illustration (I can't remember which story, though!) or as a character in one of my own potential stories. Either way, I like to think that, despite not looking like me a great deal, I instilled some of my own positive attributes into the character.