As we have already announced, Damyan Damyanov is the winner of the national award "Konstantin Konstantinov" in the category "Illustrator" for 2017, and we had the opportunity to talk to him about the prestigious award and his work.
He was awarded by his hometown of Sliven and emphasized this connection during the award ceremony. "The National Award "Konstantin Konstantinov" in the category "Illustrator" holds a special place in my heart, not only because it is undoubtedly prestigious, but also because it was established in my hometown, where I graduated from art high school. Thanks to the great artists who taught me there, I realized that this is exactly what I want to do and that drawing and inventing make sense of my life. In addition, the winners of this award are artists such as Yasen Gyuzelev, Petar Stanimirov and Penko Gelev, for example, as well as several other names that I respect immensely. And despite everything - I do not think that awards in our work are unimportant, but I do not think that they are a higher goal either. The beautiful, understandable, but also meaningful visual language that we speak through the things we do and with which we become co-authors in someone's literary work is much more important to me,” shares the artist.
In the category, Damyan Damyanov was nominated with the two books by Gianni Rodari from the Ciela publishing house – “Favorite Christmas Stories” and “Gelsomino in the Land of Liars”. He worked on them in 2016 and although the works are similar, the text and the interpretation of the illustrations differ. For the book “Favorite Christmas Stories”, the illustrator chose watercolor and the “wet-on-wet” technique. It allowed him to achieve more poetic, sometimes even accidental, beautiful results with its unintentionality and expressiveness ala prima vista. "I have drawn at least twice as many things in this book as were included in the publication, as my self-criticism rejects things that do not pass the test of a number of criteria. There is absolutely no computer intervention in these illustrations, which I think makes them more alive."
The artistic experiments in "Gelsomino" are much more. The work has been published and illustrated many times in Bulgaria, so "there the work began with sketches in the notebook, which I never part with, sometimes I add color there. Then the illustration (still at a fairly working level) is scanned and goes through numerous metamorphoses of composition, drawing, color, texture, sometimes with the use of different types of graphic software. The difficult thing in this case is to make things sound harmonious and homogeneous in the end."
Damyan Damyanov would have a different view if he could choose the books from his entire body of work to present to the jury. Both books that he shared with us are not for children and visually differ greatly from the works of Gianni Rodari. One is "One Thousand and One Nights", retold by the Lebanese writer Canaan-al Sheikh, which has graphic illustrations inspired by the style of the Middle East, in which "eroticism and decapitated bodies so cross the relative boundaries of decency". The other is a book of stories by Mikhail Veshim - "When I Was an Army General". In it, the illustrations are dedicated and sustained in the style of "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik", whose artist is the great Josef Lada.
This year, numerous publishers and artists are participating in the competition in the “Illustrator” category. After the big elimination, the works of Damyan Damyanov and one other artist remain for the final judging. Boris Stoilov, who was a member of the festival jury, defined the young artist’s style as “contemporary classical illustration” and sees “a connection between him and Lyuben Zidarov.” Damyan Damyanov does not deny, willingly or not, that there is some connection between his work and that of the great Bulgarian illustrator, but not through superficial copying, but on another level. “Of course, Lyuben Zidarov is undoubtedly among the great artists who have influenced me. I, like thousands of other children, grew up with his “Scheherazade”, “Andersen’s Fairy Tales”, etc. More importantly, however, I have truly appreciated their great artistic merits years later. If we assume that there is any similarity between an artist of his rank and my humble personality, it would be not so much in technique or artistic deformation, for example, but rather in the humor that more or less sneaks into the illustrations.” For him, however, it remains important “that my illustrations pass for ‘contemporary,’ whatever we put into that term.”
Over the years, the artist has had quite a few teachers, illustrators, poster artists, calligraphers, typographers or painters. The list for him is quite long, quite “colorful” and covers a very wide period of time, but he deliberately does not want to mention names so as not to miss anyone. “Every good artist has something or a lot that you can learn from. The list includes Pieter Bruegel, for example, as well as Kiro Mavrov, Penko Gelev or Sean Tan, for example. However, I cannot leave out the artists from “Rainbow” – all of them, with their different approach to a given story, have undoubtedly ignited in me the thirst to “translate” a given text into a visual language.”
Probably every reader has noticed that Damyan Damyanov's illustrations and their interpretation are different in every work he works on. He prefers to approach each task differently – according to the theme, mood, language, era and depth of the work. "I am quite radical in my understanding of the so-called "style" in illustration, as well as in graphic design. Who knows, I may be wrong, but I do not think that an artist must necessarily pursue a principle of work with which he is proven, recognizable and ultimately – which carries "less risks".
The artist uses a different technique, composition, and stylization for each project in order to fully unfold its core, its initial idea, and to discover for himself the connection with the author's text. "The other reason for this is that maybe I write to myself quickly and I simply want to try something new." Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that he often finds "flaws" in himself. "Seven Outlaws and a Donkey" - a little-known work by Branislav Nušić, which turned out well, but not enough. Simply "OK" is not "OK" for me. Another work that he worked on, but would rework again is "a book by Erich Kästner, which I drew a long time ago, but low-budget printing ruined my work. For better or worse, the imperfections and shortcomings of a given work sometimes become visible to the author only after some time."
Among his professional dreams remain the eternal Andersen fairy tales, in which he would like to try in a new and exciting way to convey the beautiful tragedy in the stories, as well as his childhood memory of Oscar Wilde – “fairy tales that I have read since I was little, and until now”.
“I would not like to illustrate an author who imagines the writer-artist relationship as working on points and subpoints, written by one and followed verbatim by the other. I am not saying that there should not be a dialogue – quite the opposite. However, it is good, in my opinion, for the author to trust the artist/designer, to admire the bold and provocative decisions, and not to hinder him. There are quite a few Bulgarian authors for whom it would be an honor for me to work, but I would not want to work for someone who seeks success at the cost of being cheap, scandalous to the point of vulgarity.”
What has Damyan Damyanov prepared for us in the near future? Next week during the Spring Book Bazaar (May 23-28, 2017) at the National Palace of Culture in the Marble Foyer, we will be able to enjoy his playful social experiment, involving 60 co-authors. On his Facebook page, everyone can follow the development of the entire project. Very soon, the artist will begin illustrating a very crazy Russian author who has also written for children. He has not left side ideas and non-commercial projects in the background either, and we will be looking forward to them.
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