Books inspired by drawings

Good illustrations and good texts are the two things that motivate parents to buy a book for their child. Through illustrations you can interpret the text, written in the book, in another way. But, as it turned out, this could also be done the other way around: a book created in reverse.

In mid December an exhibition of art works of illustrators, whose drawings became the basis for children’s books, are presented in Donetsk Art Museum. About 100 art works made by artists from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia are put on display in the museum along with children’s books. This way, visitors of the museum can compare the original and the final product. The “Children’s Art Gallery” project was initiated by the Master Class Publishing House. The curator of the project in Donetsk is Lilia Bershova, Art Museum employee. According to her, the goal of the exhibition is to get children and their parents interested in visual arts and, most importantly, to promote the work of our young talented artists.

“As a publishing house, we have been looking for good illustrators for children’s books for a long time, but we often received ‘non-living’ illustrations, which had no warmth or energy in them. That’s why when we started to work on a color children’s book we would go on websites of artists and would visit exhibitions in galleries. From all that we’ve seen we got an idea of making a book in reverse. We thought we could take a ready-made picture, which was created in a burst of inspiration and carries positive energy, and then make a story that would go along with it. Eventually we ended up with the stories that were written by the artists – the authors of those paintings. There are even families that work in tandem: wife is an illustrator and husband writes stories. After a year of such work we published seven books in two languages. Now we are working on another four books,” said Natalia HRYHORASH, art director of the Master Class Publishing House.

Hryhorash told us that now there are 15 artists involved in this project, while in the beginning they worked with only five illustrators. According to the art director, it is important to let a child understand how a book is created and how the artists work. That is why along with the exposition they organized master classes for children, where artists teach young children the basics of visual art.

The exhibition “Children’s Art Gallery” will be open in Donetsk Art Museum until January 8.