Autor/ka:
Paulina Józefina Moczyńska

Illustrator, a Fairy-Tale Profession

baśnie

Before I fully immersed myself in literature, for most of my childhood, I stubbornly didn't read any book in its entirety. Until I was 10 years old, a book had to meet one criterion for me. It had to tell its story through images.

In my family home, there's still an old edition of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales from 1955 on the shelf. On the cover, the Snow Queen glides upward in a sleigh. If I had to say which illustrated book shaped me, I would point to this one without hesitation. Of course, as a child, I wasn't much interested in the illustrator; for a long time, the name Jan Marcin Szancer meant little to me. For years of ignorance, I had no idea who shaped my illustrative taste. Today, his works are a journey into the heart of my childhood. Every time I see fairy tales in an antique bookshop window, I pause with a smile.

I have an episode at the Academy of Fine Arts in my biography and, although I still regularly return to charcoal and colored pencils, I didn't become an illustrator, even though for a long time it was a fairy-tale profession for me. While working for Jet Line, I was able to return to slightly dusty loves. When the network of digital screens MORE, which we call Instagram of the street, was launched, it was obvious to us that it couldn't lack works by the young generation of illustrators.

Our Illustrators

I asked several artists we work with what illustrations they remember from their childhood.

Ola Szmida really liked Hanna Czajkowska's black and white illustrations for The Children of Bullerby Village. But the biggest influence on her were animations and comics by Walt Disney creators. She was (and still is) a fan of Disney animations like Dumbo the Elephant, Ariel the Mermaid and The Lion King. As for comics, she read Donald Duck so passionately that she could recite and describe from memory what was happening on individual pages.

Anna Dusza still keeps a collection of books from her childhood, which she now looks at with her daughters. Her favorite illustrators are Barbara Gawdzik-Brzozowska, who combined large, simple color patches with subtle lines, and Ha-Ga, or Anna Gosławska-Lipińska. She fell in love with her for the images of frightened guinea pigs and cunning foxes.

 

 

Bartosz Szymkiewicz was greatly influenced by representatives of the Polish poster school: Piotr Młodożeniec, Lech Majewski, Henryk Tomaszewski, and Waldemar Świerzy. Bartosz has always wanted to design album covers for as long as he can remember. He always liked those designed by Rosław Szaybo from the Polish Jazz series. Each of them is different, but they are all part of the series. Bartosz says that only today does he understand what a challenge it is to achieve this effect.

illustrators_inspirations

And you, what illustrations transport you to the heart of your childhood?

 

I took the illustrations for the illustration of memories from:
bonito.pl
wyborcza.pl
telemagazyn.pl
muzeumjazzu.pl