IF - Sky

For 'Sky' I am showing you an illustration out of my project 'The Golden Hero Dragan'. Sun and Moon have been stolen by dragons so that night has been reigning. To gain the love of the princess, Dragan decides to find them back, which of course he succeeds in.

In this double spread ( 2 x A4, i. e. 59.4 x 21 cm) you can see how he has reinstated them into the sky.

IF - mirror

The entry for this weeks topic 'mirror' is my first one for ages. Hope you like it.

It's not done in my usual realistic style in color pencil, but entirely on the computer as you can tell. I saw these watch towers (that have been out of use for years) when I was on an island in the North Sea last winter.

IF - fluid

For 'fluid' I show you an illustration for my book 'The Golden Hero Dragan'. It was really hard to capture the feeling of fluidness.
During the research I found so many different aspects of water like flowing water, drops, bubbles, frost patterns, waves and more that I intend to do a series of it.

IF - popularity (7)

Moles are more intelligent than man. When we had one in our garden, we tried all the popular means of scaring it away: nothing worked. As in Germany they are a protected species (I am at a loss why because almost every meadow I see around here seems to be riddled with molehills), so you mustn't kill them. Anway, to protect our precious lawn, we tried the ultimate solution and installed a mole-trap (You can buy them in spite of the ban to kill moles. How crazy is that?). The mole must have laughed out loud at us by then because, guess what? It  just dug a new burrow around the trap!

IF - popularity (6)

The last winter was so hard with masses of snow for weeks that voles came into my garden and ate virtually every single bulb they could find. And I had masses of them as spring flowers are my favourites, especially tulips. I had them in so many different colours and varieties including parrot tulips. In my garden plants are grouped by colours: shades of white in one flower bed, shades of pale pink over bright pink to dark red in another one and shades of blue and purple in yet another one. In between some greenish yellow of alchemilla. Anyway this year I didn't dare to plant new bulbs because of the voles which, once they had discovered my garden, continued to come throughout the year.
When I googled them to better know what they looked like I was completely surprized to see that they are no bigger than an ordinary mouse. Somehow by the extent of damage they had done, I had imagined them to be closer to rats.

IF - popularity (5)

In my first garden I proudly planted some dahlias which had such a wonderful colour and were full of blossoms, only to come out the next morning not finding anything left but the naked stems. By then I had never seen slugs and when I discovered how tiny these voracious monsters are... Arghh!
Fortunately this is not the season to deal with slugs and I hope the summer won't be so humid that they'll become a plague.

IF - popularity (4)

Follows part IV.
My son had a tick last year. We didn't find it immediately, so it got stuck and infested and he had to be treated with antibiotics (though I try to avoid them if possible). You can still see the spot.