The troubled emperor
A family of zmei kidnapped the sun and moon in the reign of the Red Emperor and he sent word to all corners of the world that whoever rescues them and brings back the light to the world will recive half his realm and his daughter's hand in marriage.
It is strange to be working on Romanian fairy tales while I have never been more afraid for my country or my future in it.
For context:
Illustrating my childhood fairy tales has been a long time dream of mine but I always thought myslef not good enough to do it. Well, some time ago I had to snap myself to the reality that I already illustrated sevral books professionally so there's no excuse not to tackle my old favorites. I started with the Romanian fairy tale 'Greuceanu' and I was very self indulgent with the project since I managed to squeeze 15 illustrations out of a roughly 3500 word text and I also made some very choice design decisions.
Now, sketching them out has been an utter joy but the inking...I started doing it right before our first round of our presidential election. I've been a ball of fear, anger and dipair ever since a Russian stenographer who praised the architects of the holocaust as heroes and pretends he's a man of the people outsider even though he was in the background of some of our most corrupt goverments won the most votes with an entierly tiktok and scam call campaign. It has been a rough week to say the least and I've been trying to keep sane by moving my pen across the paper. Results mixed, but there's more illustrations comming.