FIRST POST

"First born kittens thrown into the water" - Serbian proverb.

I hope that my first post (kitten), thrown in the water of the Internet, find the way to the audience who likes this kind of art ...

A few months ago I was involved in illustrating a book about Serbian mythology called Serbian Expelled Demons or Banished Demons.

The book was written by Milenko Bodirogić.

Beside me on this project as illustrators also participated Petar Meseldžija, Dragan Bibin, Miloš Vujanović i Vanja Todorić. With the visual aspect, this book represents a kind of illustration brand of Arts Academy in Novi Sad. All the illustrators in some way related to the same institution – Meseldžija studied painting at the Academy of Novi Sad, Miloš (Anatomical drawing) and Ivica (Graphics Books & Comics ) are the lecturers. Bibin and Vanja are master students.

The book preview (PDF) : http://www1.datafilehost.com/d/fab17469

The second tome of Serbian Mythology Banished Demons

Here are some of my illustrations and text explanations from the book:

Service Ghost

This creature is a little man, no bigger than your thumb, dressed only in trousers and with a red cap on his head. His hands are very skilled and lucky and with them he manages to achieve all the desires of his master. The creature would fulfill all the tasks that are put out before him, only if a man, his master, treats him nicely.

Service ghosts are forced to collect more gold, and gold is a drink of thirsty man …

Baba Roga (Grandma Horn)

Baba Roga is old, as grandmothers usually are, and ugly. The description of her ugliness goes like this: toothless mouth, long hooked nose, a hunchback, large ears, bony hands and fingers with long nails, torn, ragged clothing, and a horn on top of her forehead. That is why she is called Baba Roga – Grandma Horn.
 

  

 Serbian Baba Roga is similar to the Russian Baba Yaga. But this is not the same creature. 

According to beliefs, the child of Baba Roga grows under her armpit.

Baba Roga visit children at night. Cover them when they are cold, and cleans heir forehead covered with sweat from their heavy dreams and nightmares …

Karakondzula 

Serbian Karakondzula has a human form - she is old and skinny women, with long messy hair, long nails... Karakondzula attack Serbian housewife's with a cauldron dropping on the victim’s head.

Fat Karakondzula especially like to ride drunk people.

Unbaptized creatures

 

Unbaptized creatures are children who died before baptism, before being named, and as they say: "he who has no name, does not exist"… They appear at night, in the form of birds.

Werewolf

There is a belief among Serbian Folk that the unborn child of dead pregnant woman can become a werewolf. This happens when an animal passes over the grave of a pregnant women.

The vampire has a human form and he has no shadow. Werewolf has a wolf form and shadow of man.

Werewolves possessed incredible power. It was rumored among the people that werewolves can swallow the sun or the moon - this is known to us as the eclipse of the sun and the moon.

Some magicians can change ordinary person into a werewolf for some time. This creature has a wolf form and human consciousness, during this period he suffers a lot.

Butcher from the Story about night riders (Todors)

Dogheads

As their name clearly states, these creatures have the body of a human and the head of a dog, with strong teeth and just one big eye in their head. They understand human language, but there was never a single case  or testimony that stated that a dog head ever spoke the human language.

More illustrations from the book you can see on my Behance profile: http://www.behance.net/IvicaStevanovic