Author: Tanya Panova

There are projects, that are just love from the very beginning. For me these are the texts of Jen A. Mann. I have no idea how she makes up her texts. They are always so fresh and at the same time so macabre in a way — you cannot forget the story once you have read it.

In this case with the sharks I enjoyed the text and the way it inspired me, even though it is not going to become a book. That’s why there are not words here over the illustration. Yes, one of the beloved projects, that never happened!

Yet it’s not the first and not the last project of Jen I am honored to illustrate, so one day there will be another illustrated quirky story here!

It was this March, when communicating with clients I felt, how AI takes them from me. By their language, their action. Now that’s the time to act, I thought. To figure out, how to find a way for my art to people in the real world. I registered a small business to make small handcrafted goods.

Now I have arrangements with four shops in my town that all sell different products from me. These are physical goods, very local, with a strong texture feeling. Linocut prints on different surfaces is handcraft on one hand, but still something reproducible on the other hand. For now, it feels just perfect for me. I neither need no digital tools to produce them (paper, knife, colors, rubber, glue…), nor to communicate with the partners shops (just take 15 minutes on the bike to meet these nice people).

Going on vacation the day after tomorrow I feel like another person. Book illustration is still relevant and there a couple projects to start in the fall, but now I also have this additional support from completely different source, that looks more reliable in this new reality.

Letzte Woche fand im Literaturhaus München ein Abend zum 80. Geburtstag von Rafik Schami statt, und ich war glücklich, im Saal dabei zu sein.

Als ich sein Buch „Eine Hand voller Sterne“ gelesen habe, wollte ich es sofort in meine Muttersprache übersetzen. Nach langer Suche nach einem Verlag ist das Buch 2019 auf Russisch erschienen.

Jetzt bin ich weniger Übersetzerin und mehr Illustratorin. So habe ich an dem Abend nicht nur gelauscht, sondern auch skizziert.

Hier sind Rafik Schami, die Lektorin Tatjana Michaelis, der Verleger Horst Lauinger und die Künstlerin Root Leeb zu sehen.

Yesterday I was asked to draw a portrait of a ballerina girl. Right away I remembered, that I have experience in drawing ballerinas! This one was created for some ballet school 8 years ago and it feels like from another world.

And no, this one is not a portrait 🙂

When Rebecca Pratt proposed a collaboration, explaining that underwater life is to coastal New Zealand kids what forest life is to us—something many of them don’t encounter very often—I agreed right away.

Bec is the author and engine behind the book project about marine shelf life near Taranaki, New Zealand. She provided a ton of photos and descriptions of what people can experience while scuba diving. She is incredibly enthusiastic about sharing the beauty of shelf species with kids, and to reach as many children as possible, she published “Shelf Life” in both English and Māori, under the title “Paenga Ora”.

I am not a kid, but I enjoyed it leaning so much about shelf life while working on the illustrations!

At the moment I am experimenting with analogue media and searching for a new direction in my art. That’s what I enjoy and share.

And oh, how shocking it was to see AI generated postcards while travelling the last week. While in London, I literally could not find a single classic postcard with the red bus, only AI generated slob in the myriads of tourist shops. Such a simple thing like a real photo seems to become a rarity.
That makes me think more about how to remain relevant with my art in this brave new world.

Here are -real- salt dough magnets I created. Need to experiment with the paints, since ceramic paints are not working that well with this material.

Street festivals need sooo many people to be on the illustrations.

At the moment, there is a lot happening at my desk and in my head. So far I won’t be able to show it, but I can say that the way AI transforms the illustration field and the way clients communicate, forces me to transform my own presentation, focus on things a really value and work on offering my work to the public in a different way.

Happy to share that a new book from the series about adventures of the clever poodle Max is out!

Allen McCaulley makes up unpredictable and surprising stories. And each time I am searching for the best way to make the lettering on the cover resonate with this story. In this case, I tried birthday candles, confetti and gift wrap ribbons, but just bold bright letters ended up working the best.

For the book “Mamas kaputter Akku” (Mum’s broken battery) I was looking for a surface that could create a silence and hiddenness feeling.
I found it in an old roll of wallpaper from my grandmother.

The brownish color and rough texture felt just right. Later, I digitally added another layer of texture from a different old paper.

Only transferring the drawings with a light tablet was a challenge, since the wallpaper is hardly transparent.

All the more beautiful that something which had been waiting for its moment for decades has now become part of this book.