The Rain Fairy

I was approached by a director of live fairy-tale performances on Lubovna Castle to create a illustration for the poster of his upcoming show. I have never before worked on illustrating anything for children—I was all about half-naked shamans and muscle-bound sword fighters at the time. I welcomed the challenge to try something new and different.

Illustration for children is a huge topic and there are so many different styles. I myself grew up reading Marvel comic books. So, for me, comic book style was a perfect style of illustration. I did, however, understand that a lot of people do not share my opinion on this issue, so I looked for something softer.

At the time I was very much into board games. (Yes, a lot has changed since then. Now I don’t buy them in bulk anymore. Only one or two a month. That’s not excessive… Is it?) I found a beautiful Dixit game. The style of the illustration there was playful, full of colors and somewhat welcoming. I spent some time analysing it, but trying to switch from what I was used to to this kind of an illustration was like trying to learn how to speak a different language.

There was no real point of trying to get this done n black and white first. I needed to go straight to colors and use soft shadows. I am really not one for softness in pictures, I like contrast—the more I can brutalize the color curve, the better. So, painting rain fairy was suddenly all about finesse and it felt like trying to paint an eggshell by crayons.

However, the result come out quite nice. Not as wondrous as Dixit illustrations, but soft and nice enough to sign my name into and keep the door to the new style of illustration open.