The book “The Old Toy Chest” / “דאָס אַלטע שפּיל-קעסטעלע” will be available for preorder soon. I am looking forward to hold it in my hands too!

Here is a scene from the book with children and their favorite stuffed animals watching TV. I neither have a TV set nor a sofa at home, so I even needed to make a small research to figure out how to make the scene look naturally.

A sneak peek into the book “The old toy chest” (“דאָס אַלטע שפּיל-קעסטעלע”) by Esther Himelstein to be published this year. A bilingual edition by Kinde-Loshn Publications with a sweet story of stuffed animals left alone for decades in the attic. They plan to reunite with their owners and make a surprising discovery that will forever change their destiny.

This small vignette I illustrated while my daughter was a baby, so the timing worked perfectly for such job. Here is also a page from the dummy book, with the text attached on paper over the sketch. I like it playing with the composition using small pieces of paper.

A sneak peek into a book with that many dogs I have never illustrated before.

This is an advent calendar project I started in the summer, but I did not make it before the end of November to be able to print. Behind each of the little doors there are the name of the bird and the sounds they make. As a resource I used a dictionary of bird sounds “Singt der Vogel, ruft er oder schlägt er?” by Peter Krauss. It’s a wonderful reading anyhow, so I enjoyed working on this calendar.

Not sure if I will ever print more then one copy of it.

Digging through not fully used sketchbooks (I normally have about five active and sketch in random ones, that I find the first) I found these friends. I could not remember how I draw them and why. Then I saw the date 23.02.22 and no wonder I completely forgot I ever draw it.

The picture hooks competition has always been my favorite and inspired me to have great time illustrating one single phrase. It is not a marathon, just one or two picture. What a joy.
This time the theme is “What’s inside?”, and here is my entry. One should show a character before and after opening a parcel.

Here are some linocut snowmen. When printing the words, I either missed one or another letter or printed it upside down. I would never be able to be a typesetter a hundred years ago!

Some illustrations from the book about reading books. There are so many different ways!
On a bench…

…or upside down…

…or on the beach…

…and many other to find out in the book by Paul Ruble

Some of the projects I am working on are especially exciting for me, because very, very strange things happen in these stories. I love such stories. This spring I have been working on such a story, and even though the project has not been completed yet and I am not sure if the book will ever be published, I believe some of these pictures deserve to be published, at least here.

So here is the main character, Badger, the famous nature photographer. He is trying to find the Great Eyed Deer and make a photo of him.

On his way in the forest he meets many crazy creatures. Like this hare.

Of course, at the end of the story the brave badger finds the deer. But before that, he has to deal with awkward situations and unpredictable forest inhabitants.