'She bade him leave his horse with her and ride on her own two-winged horse'

Illustration for The Bold Knight, the Apples of Youth, and the Water of Life, from Myths and Legends of Russia, collected by Aleksandr Afanas'ev and translated by Norbert Guterman; published by The Folio Society: [link]

The embroidery on the knight's cloak is almost directly inspired by an Ivan Bilibin illustration.

As it will no doubt be noticed that the horse's head appears to lose itself in the red cloak, I also would like to point out that this is another one which suffers from the paleness of the ink against the strength of the gouache (or a different, darker ink, as the case may be elsewhere) in the original drawing. However, this is the final printed illustration: [link]

Much better, I think? I promise you a great deal of planning went into it (in this as in all the others). Here, I had the problem of depicting in silhouette the horse's head, the knight, and both wings, all occupying pretty much the same space. In order for all these elements not to become one amorphous blob, I had the cloak blown in between the horse's head and the farthest wing. It also helped me to define the shape of the knight quite satisfactorily. As I knew the pantone black wouldn't have a problem fighting the red in the final reproduction, I trusted the device well enough to expect it to work in the final result, even though the black of the mane in particular doesn't look strong enough in the original. So I did nothing more to it lest the attempt should instead prove detrimental, as it often does... The end, in this instance, seems to have well justified the means, I think...
_______________


Please do not reproduce or redistribute elsewhere without permission. Thank you.