09-28-2020, 11:00 PM
Thank you very much, everyone!!!
No, they're from 1910s - 1920s (I can't find the exact date of their creation / publication, my book is from 1969), by Czech painter and illustrator Artuš Scheiner.
Definitely, but I'd say my mom and my grandma (and to a degree my great-grandmother) were the most prominent influence. All of them share(d, great-grandma moved on from this world long ago) the same, rather dark sense of humor, appreciation for the dark, morbid and macabre, and love for literature and art. I naturally soaked all of it in by simply being ex-posed to it in fun ways when I spent time with them.
Czech only. It was the era of Czech National Revival, and I don't want to type about it in detail, because there's a lot to type, but it was era of reclaiming our status and identity as a nation after two centuries of Habsburg domination, during which Czech were treated as inferior ethnicity and the language and culture were being erased from everything official. Collections of fairytales back then were less childrens' books and more of a proof of our own folklore and culture, so foreign fairytales, eventhough well loved, simply didn't have a place in these books.
As for traditional Czech fairytales, there are some unique to us, and some that are slightly changed versions of well-known european fairytales. Those are really old tales that found their way into floklore of nations across the whole Europe, so you'll find slightly different versions of them in all European countries. That means some of our fairytales are very similar to what you'd find in Grimms.
I'm leaving Andersen out of it, because he changed stories a lot and some of them were his originals, whereas Grimms were collecting the folk tales as they were, and only edited them for quality of language purposes, though they did include some of Perrault stories, and Perrault also changed the original folk tales quite a bit, but I'm going off on a dangerous tangent here, so I'll stop.
Whew, sorry for yet another rant.
Day 272
Inspired by Lejays and davidd, I also wanted to take some fairy photos, but I was immediately stopped by three obstacles - lack of a garden, abundance of rain outside (thank goodness for it, though, the land needs all the rain it can soak right now), and finally, low numbers of fairies in my collection. Only two of my faries have wings, but Faybelle's are actually a part of her necklace and the little blue fairy is mostly made of papier-mâché, she's very fragile and not very poseable. The rest are fairies by virtue of being part of Azone's Lil' Fairy line. So I made the best of what I have, and I guess we now have a photographic proof that fairies' natural habitats include lightboxes, too.
![[Image: b8b196cfd002f474f95fb4c845eff55c.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b8/b1/96/b8b196cfd002f474f95fb4c845eff55c.jpg)
![[Image: defa848a5426d8a503a28ade0283322a.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/de/fa/84/defa848a5426d8a503a28ade0283322a.jpg)
Monty doesn't really feel like a fairy, to be honest, but he'll have to accept it. Nothing stops him from being a dark fairy, though.
(09-28-2020, 02:11 PM)davidd Wrote: The illustrations look beautiful! Are those 19th century illustrations in this version?
Did books you owned and loved as a child influence the style of your own art?
No, they're from 1910s - 1920s (I can't find the exact date of their creation / publication, my book is from 1969), by Czech painter and illustrator Artuš Scheiner.
Definitely, but I'd say my mom and my grandma (and to a degree my great-grandmother) were the most prominent influence. All of them share(d, great-grandma moved on from this world long ago) the same, rather dark sense of humor, appreciation for the dark, morbid and macabre, and love for literature and art. I naturally soaked all of it in by simply being ex-posed to it in fun ways when I spent time with them.
(09-28-2020, 07:13 PM)Lejays17 Wrote: Is the book only Czech fairy-tales, or are they also translations of other fairy-tales from around the place? Like versions of Grimm or Andersen?
Czech only. It was the era of Czech National Revival, and I don't want to type about it in detail, because there's a lot to type, but it was era of reclaiming our status and identity as a nation after two centuries of Habsburg domination, during which Czech were treated as inferior ethnicity and the language and culture were being erased from everything official. Collections of fairytales back then were less childrens' books and more of a proof of our own folklore and culture, so foreign fairytales, eventhough well loved, simply didn't have a place in these books.
As for traditional Czech fairytales, there are some unique to us, and some that are slightly changed versions of well-known european fairytales. Those are really old tales that found their way into floklore of nations across the whole Europe, so you'll find slightly different versions of them in all European countries. That means some of our fairytales are very similar to what you'd find in Grimms.
I'm leaving Andersen out of it, because he changed stories a lot and some of them were his originals, whereas Grimms were collecting the folk tales as they were, and only edited them for quality of language purposes, though they did include some of Perrault stories, and Perrault also changed the original folk tales quite a bit, but I'm going off on a dangerous tangent here, so I'll stop.
Whew, sorry for yet another rant.
Day 272
Inspired by Lejays and davidd, I also wanted to take some fairy photos, but I was immediately stopped by three obstacles - lack of a garden, abundance of rain outside (thank goodness for it, though, the land needs all the rain it can soak right now), and finally, low numbers of fairies in my collection. Only two of my faries have wings, but Faybelle's are actually a part of her necklace and the little blue fairy is mostly made of papier-mâché, she's very fragile and not very poseable. The rest are fairies by virtue of being part of Azone's Lil' Fairy line. So I made the best of what I have, and I guess we now have a photographic proof that fairies' natural habitats include lightboxes, too.
Monty doesn't really feel like a fairy, to be honest, but he'll have to accept it. Nothing stops him from being a dark fairy, though.