Bao Quyen
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Deník N - Z čeho kvete lotos Book Illustration
Book: Z čeho kvete lotos — Chili Ta & Magdalena Slezáková
My role: Cover illustration, interior illustrations and selected recipe illustrations
Book Illustration
About the Book
Through the personal experiences of cook and content creator Chili Ta, journalist Magdalena Slezáková explores identity, family relationships and life between Czech and Vietnamese cultures. Z čeho kvete lotos brings together personal storytelling, family memories and Vietnamese folk tales, opening a conversation about the connections—and misunderstandings—between generations.
My illustrations accompany the traditional stories within this contemporary narrative, giving readers another way to enter the worlds described on the page.
The Cover Illustration
The cover illustration brings the lotus of the title into an illustrated scene. A figure appears among tall lotus stems, pink blossoms and broad green leaves, with a waterline crossing the composition. White birds move through the scene, while the violet sky contrasts with the greens beneath the surface.
The lotus also connects the artwork to the book’s central metaphor: growing through difficult circumstances and finding beauty and understanding along the way. This relationship between the title, the image and the themes of the book gives the cover a role beyond introducing its subject.
Illustrating Vietnamese Legends, Myths and Fairy Tales
Inside the book, my work focused on the Vietnamese stories woven through the narrative. These illustrations offered a different kind of storytelling from the personal experiences explored in the text: a space for mythical beings, imagined worlds and scenes drawn from folklore.
One example is the illustrated opening for the chapter Šťastná harmonie. Mythical creatures surround a circular centre against a deep violet, star-filled background. The composition spreads across the chapter opening, giving the illustration room to establish an atmosphere before the reader continues into the text.
Across these pieces, my contribution was to give the accompanying tales a visual presence of their own—not to retell Chili’s life through pictures, but to illustrate the legends, myths and fairy tales that sit alongside it.
From Folklore to Food
Alongside the narrative artwork, I illustrated a selection of recipes. These pieces brought a different subject into the project, moving from mythical worlds to food that readers could prepare themselves.
The recipe illustrations extended my contribution beyond the cover and folklore, allowing the artwork to accompany both the storytelling and the practical parts of the book.
A Book Illustrated from Cover to Interior
This commission gave me the opportunity to contribute across an entire book rather than through a single standalone image. The cover introduces its world, the interior illustrations accompany its traditional tales, and the recipe artwork adds another dimension to the reading experience.
It was an honour to bring my illustrations to a project that places Vietnamese stories at its heart, creating space for them to be encountered through both words and images.