More Slavic Art Inspiration

In the 1990s, saddled with a somewhat useless journalism degree I zig-zagged into teaching English at a state-run school in what was then Czechoslovakia (thanks to the Velvet Divorce I ended up on the “wrong” side of the new border). 

One of the things I took out of that experience—other than a whipped liver—was an obsession in collecting Slavic folk art books dumped in the millions by the exiting Russians.

If anything starting to run the Hill Cantons, which has one big foot in the dark, moody fairy tales and pagan/syncretistic mythology of pan-Slavdom, has given me an opportunity to rekindle that monomania and put it to at least some inspirational use. 

Big and little early 20^th century names like Bilibin, Roerich, Mucha, Repin, Orinyasky and others have graced many of the posts here and many of the published arcana.

Beyond my silly and transparent aesthetic pretensions, they serve a practical purpose of generally helping me visualize in my mind's eye what the hell the HC looks like. And even on occasion a whole encounter, NPC, adventure site etc may get jostled out of digging on a certain picture (like the downright weird neo-paganism of this guy).

Recently I have been tracking down the lovely illustrations of Ukrainian artist Heorhiy/George Narbut (note to self: “add more bears with polearms”). A taste...