Olga Dugina and Andrej Dugin paint lavishly detailed, richly textured and enthrallingly odd illustrations for children’s books.
Their intricately detailed paintings can, in turn, carry the feeling of Medieval tempera paintings, the grotesque fantasies of Bosch and Breugel, the carefully arranged tableaus of renaissance tapestries and, in the their collaboration with Madonna (yes, that Madonna) for the fourth in her series of children’s books, a kind of decorative Persian surrealism.
They say in an interview about their work on that book, The Adventures of Abdi, that they work collaboratively out of necessity, can take anywhere from one and a half to four months to complete an image and tackle a project like Abdi by going straight through, first picture to the last, finishing the cover at the end.
I haven’t been able to find much information on them or their working methods, but I suspect they are working in opaque watercolor or tempera.
They are also the authors and illustrators of a retelling of the classic The Brave Little Tailor and The Dragon’s Feathers.
I can’t find an official site for Dugina and Dugin. There is a small selection of their work on illustrators-online.com and an unofficial archive of the illustrations for The Adventures of Abdi, with nice large images of the paintings.
Link via Monster Brains.
Addendum: Reader Tat has found two additional links to excelent resources for their work, here and here. Tat also added a resource to my current post on Russian illustrator Gennady Spirin, who I suggest may have been a influence on Dugina and Dugin. – Charley, 17 November, 2009
