It's easy to spot the eye-catching covers of the Ukrainian editions of the popular Harry Potter series in Ukrainian book stores. They, as well as many other outstanding illustrations, are produced by illustrator Vladyslav Yerko.
Praised by literature stars like Paulo Coelho, Yerko, 52, works for a Ukrainian publishing house and lives in Kyiv.
His crisp, hand-painted illustrations formed the recognizable brand of Ukraine’s A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA publishing house. Yerko has been working for them for more than a decade. His most famous works were the covers for the seven books of the Ukrainian translation of the Harry Potter series.
Joanne Rowling herself was seen giving special attention to his work. During an interview filmed in her house in 2007 one of the Ukrainian Harry Potter editions was seen standing at her desk, its cover turned to the viewer.
Another famous work of Yerko was the cover of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.” In the United States, the book, published in Ukrainian and English, was nominated as “Best Children’s Book of 2006,” an award issued by the Anderson House Foundation. The book can still be found in stores with digital version available for iPad.
“It is the most amazing children’s book that I have ever seen in my life,” Coelho, Brazilian novelist, once said about “The Snow Queen,” illustrated by Yerko.
Yerko also illustrated all of Coelho’s Russian and Ukrainian editions in a sophisticated mono-colored style.
After such success, it comes as surprise when Yerko confesses he does not like his Snow Queen illustrations and has never read any of the Harry Potter books.
“I felt guilty when I saw children’s eyes at one of the presentations when I said I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books. I wanted to kill myself,” Yerko says with a laugh, as he is sitting in a café in central Kyiv talking to the Kyiv Post.
Yerko likes to listen to classical music as he works on the new illustrations at his desk, which is, according to him, “a real mess of piles of paper and tubes of paint.” He admits it takes lots of time to illustrate a book.
He had been working on the “Little Prince” illustrations for more than three years, and after he finished the publishing house put the project on hold for seven years. It was finally printed in 2014.
It was presented on Sept. 13, but Yerko is not completely happy with his illustrations and says he would do it “in a different way now.”
“I made ‘The Snow Queen’ illustrations a long time ago and now it feels like they are not mine,” he said.
At the same time, he confesses to like the cover he painted for the Ukrainian edition of Andersen’s “The Tinderbox,” published in 2011.
Even with a number of award-winning illustrations to his credit, Yerko is still rather self-critical about his art and seems to distance himself from his works. He is certain that the devil is in the details, but says that the artwork “should have some mistakes, otherwise it’s a dead thing.”
He dreams to be assigned to illustrate the works of William Shakespeare and Edgar Poe once.
As for ideas, Yerko says he saw some of his illustrations in dreams. It was this way with “The Tales of the Foggy Albion,” British knights tales, published in Ukrainian in 2003.
“I remembered some three or four bright pictures I saw in a dream, and I turned them into a series of paintings,” he says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected]
