Cover art (and illustrations) you'll want to own

A few months ago, around the time that I received an ARC edition of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Steampunk II:  Steampunk Reloaded, I was made aware of Serbian illustrator Ivica Stevanović.  I was immediately impressed and wanted more samples of his work.

Early in December 2010, Jeff blogged about Ivica's new blog.   This blog, Edge Art, featured drawings from a book on Serbian mythology that he illustrated.  I wanted it, quite badly.  Fortunately, I know one of his students, Dunja.  Dunja just so happens to be the very talented artist who did this for me last year.   She said she would try to get a copy for me.  She emailed me a few days later saying she had acquired one and that it would be a belated Christmas gift to me.  I was quite excited.

The book arrived today and I was very surprised and elated to see this dedication.  I was feeling very ill from work exhaustion, but this has cheered me up immensely.  Many thanks to both Dunja for arranging this and Ivica for taking the time to do a personalized illustration for me.

Just thought the rest of you might want to see this very talented illustrator and just a small sampling of what promises to be a book that I'll read and re-read (once my understanding of Serbian progresses beyond elementary school-level phrases).  Hope you enjoyed these images.  If you want to see more of Ivica's work but cannot read Serbian, he is working on a few more English-language projects, including at least one (and likely more) with the VanderMeers that should see the light of day in the near future.