44. Through Eras and Continents: Medieval Times.

Jumping through several centuries, we get into Middle Ages. I am not good in history, and I don't think it's worth to do any research here, so I am placing the remaining few draings in this series in a random order, or rather in the order I got them from Victor, all of them - long time ago. Only the last one was drawn a couple of years ago, when Victor visited Zaporozh'ye, a Ukrainan city on the river Dniepr, which was the center of so called Sich Zaporoska, a cossacks' camp in 16th century (I did look this one up...).

"Cortes"

"Кортес"

"Flanders"

"Фландрия"

"A Musketeer"

"Мушкетер"

 

 "Zaporoska Sich"

"Запорожская Сечь"

 

43. Through Eras and Continents: Unexpected Turn.

Jumping a few centuries ahead... I am not really good in history, so I am not sure my chronology is accurate...

I'll start with this "triple-portrait." I love it for its laconic lines, each of them plays more than one role.
Everyone with Russian (or any Slavic) cultural background will recognized them right away, but for others, these are epic heroes from around 1000 a.d. (yes, I looked it up!). I actually saw that their Russian name, bogatyr, or vityaz, was used in English untranslated.

"Russian Knights"

"Витя-зи"

Change of plans! Originally I just planned to present a mix of Victor's drawings about different countries between ancient time and now, but this will have to wait. When I posted this last drawing, I tried to think of some brief explanation about these guys, so my non-Russian readers knew what I was talking about, and I recalled a famous painting by Victor (!) Vasnetsov from 1898, and then I suddenly remembered one more depiction of bogatyrs that Victor drew when he was 21. So I decided that three images about bogatyrs deserve a separate post.

"Victor Vasnetzov, Bogatyrs"

"Виктор Васнецов, Богатыри"

I actually remember when and how Victor drew his version of this classic painting. At that time he made up images for all his friends and used them to tell stories about their past and current adventures. Victor himself is on the right. He explained that he'd chosen the image of Napoleon for himself because of his height and habits of a "little tyrant."

42. Through Eras and Continents: Ancient Times

For this post, or rather a series of posts (I am planning 2 - does it make it a series?), it may be helpful to provide some background information about the artist.

Victor's first degree was in Geology, since from his early age he was dreaming about traveling the world, exploring new places and digging something out. His favorite books, at least in his youth, as I remember it, were the diaries of Roald Amundsen and Thor Heyerdahl, and his favorite magazine for many years has been "Around the World." Being born in the USSR doesn't exactly help implementing your dreams, especially if they involve freedom to travel (including financial freedom). So for a big part, Victor had to satisfy this passion through his art.

I selected several of his old drawings about different worlds - both in terms of times and places. It makes sense to organize them in chronological order (although I don't guarantee scientific precision...).

"Cenozoi"

"Ксенозой"

The following drawing should, probably, be the last one in the series, but it fits much better right here. Besides, I originally saw these two at the same time, so they seem inseparable to me.

 

"Technozoi"

"Технозой"

I am not sure why the next drawing falls into this topic at all, and what era and what continent it is about. All I can tell it is not about "here and now."

 

"The Dream of a Roman Legionary"

"Сон Легионера"

Below is Victor's take on a Bible's story about Salome, a daughter of Herod Antipas, who requested the head of John the Baptist as an award for her beautiful dance. I am not sure that is how it all happened in the 1st century... Actually, I was also planning to make a post on gastronomical topic and thought that this might be one of the entries, but than decided against it.

"Salome"

"Саломея"

 

 To be continued..

41. Wings!

Choosing a topic for the next post, I looked through Victor's drawings and noticed a lot of wings. I think, this reflects his love of freedom, his adventurism and desire to travel around the world. One of my previous posts was about angels (#21), and there are some more of them, like in the following drawing, but it is not just angels this time.

 

"A Song of an Angel."

"Песня Ангела"

 

 

"Inspiration" 

"Вдохновение"

 

 

"A Flying Ship" 

"Летучий Корабль"

For the next drawing, I need to explain the title, although it has nothing to do with wings. I don't remember exactly how, but probably I was telling Victor something about my Geometry class, and the term "Quadrature of the circle" came up. Known also as "Squaring the circle," it's one of the famous unsolvable problems of antiquity. Victor sent me this drawing entitled "Cubature of the sphere". Being far from mathematics, he actually came up with the  title simply using analogy and expanding the wording from 2-D to 3-D. I've never heard of it, but checked it out, and I was very surprised to discover that this term  actually exist. The math behind was too complicated. So I am absolutely sure it is not what Victor meant...

"Cubature of the sphere" 

"Кубатура Шара"

 

"Untitled" 

"Без Названия"

 

"Wounded Eagle"

"Раненый Орел"