Amazing Art by Olga and Andrej Dugin

So, when I was younger I was given a storybook full of children's stories by my aunt, and there was one tale in particular that stuck in my mind. I found it somewhat captivating because of its incredible illustration. The story, called "Dragon Feathers", follows the quest of a carpenter's son who is out to win the hand of a rich innkeeper's daughter. Her father says he will not agree to their marriage unless the boy manages to bring him three golden feathers from the tail of a dragon who rules over their land, and who has a reputation for being cruel--aka he eats people. Nice future in-law.

Anyway, the illustrations really are something special. They're the kind of pictures you can look at for hours, because they are full of symbolism and strange and unexplained details. There are a number of truly odd creatures that I  found so intriguing--were they dangerous? What the heck was that thing doing there? What does it have to do with the story? In a way, the illustrations are more of a story than the text.

Some of the things to look for in the pictures below: The Dragon's Wife (how does that relationship work? Is she human?), the odd architecture, (in the tree scene) the strange hooded figure sitting off to the side and the random letters in the tree, the ground and carved into the wooden gate in the house scene, the super-weird flying knight thing in the pink robe, and the walking bagpipe in the other house scene. These are only a few of the incredibly interesting details that can be found if you take a good look at the pictures.