I was pleased and honoured when asked to participate in creation of the visual form of the book which deals with the species of Parnassius butterfly in Slovakia. I have created this drawing for the book cover. It was all drawn made by tablet and mouse. The plant on the background was made by pencil, then photographed and in the post-processing it was added to the rest of the drawing.
Depicted butterly belongs to the absolutely beautiful and unique species Parnassius apollo. It is the subspecies called antiquus. It was first described by two outstanding entomologists, parnassiologists - Mr. Zelny and Mr. Eisner, in 1974. It lives only in one small Slovakian mountain range. Nowadays it can be only spotted at a very few locations. It is nearly at the point of extinction or, using different words, its extinction seems to be only a matter of time. But, hopefully, it won't happen.
