Sketchbook №4

Why don’t we live more beautifully? What happens to dreams when their fulfillment depends on people? What is the relationship between the world of concrete panel apartment buildings and nature, between the outlying neighborhoods and the imagination? Between reality and childhood?

Yulian Tabakov’s drawings create a powerful and vivid parallel reality. Their “what would happen if...” is not timid and sentimental, but bold and beautiful, like the tiger that treads along the vines between the two apartment blocks, while the astonished neighbors look on from beneath the clotheslines. The familiar details of the visual environment of Sofia’s suburbs merge into a picture that contains both the luster of adventure and the roughness of the familiar.

The book is part of the exhibition Joy, Sadness and Hope. 25 Bulgarian Children’s Book Illustrators