‘Stary niedzwiedź mocno śpi’ ("The Old Bear Is Sleeping Deeply”) —
Picturebook based on a Polish children’s counting song.
Project was done under the eye of Grażka Lange and Monika Hanulak during illustration classes at the Warszaw's Fine Arts Academy.
The structure of the book reflects the way children play “The Old Bear” while singing dedicated counting song — a person chosen as a bear sits in the middle of a circle pretending that he is asleep and snoring loudly, while other children walk around him and sing:
Old bear is sleeping deeply,
Old bear is sleeping deeply,
We are walking on our tiptoes because we’re afraid of him
When he’d wake up he would eat us!
Old bear is sleeping deeply,
We are walking on our tiptoes because we’re afraid of him
When he’d wake up he would eat us!
Flipping through the book you see the bear from different angles as if you were dancing around it.
Ideas & sketches
The song has quite disturbing hidden meaning thats why I chose charcoal to create dark and dense atmosphere. Drawings were made manually, then scanned and finished in Photoshop. Layout was prepared in Indesign using Futura font.
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