I always knew my maternal grandmother was from Ukraine (from Crimea to be exact), but only recently discovered my grandfather was also Ukrainian, and not Russian, as I previously thought, probably because both him and my grandmother were born during the Soviet Era in Ukraine, and had Russian passports. I also discovered two wonderful Ukrainian cookbooks, "Summer Kitchens" by Olia Hercules, and "Kapusta" by Alissa Timoshkina (who is also Jewish, like me), and through preparing and eating some of the recipes, Knishes and Borsch and Tzimmes with lots of soured cream and dill and chives, felt like I'm connecting to these roots of my family. This needle felted wool illustration project above also has something to do with it. In discovery of these roots I remembered the very famous Ukrainian tale of the giant turnip - a root vegetable - in which a grandfather and grandmother are trying very hard to pull a gigantic turnip out of the ground, aided by various farm animals, but only with the help of a little mouse, the turnip is finally pulled out and everyone eats a turnip soup. This illustration started as an exercise to develop the technique, so there was a lot of frustrating trial and error, but I'm quite happy with it now, and thinking of making the whole book of this tale some day. The word in the middle is "turnip" in Ukrainian - "Ripa".
A cover for a fictional book.
Preparation stage
Christmas tree robin!