06 Draw Me a Smile

Нарисуй мне улыбку

Yakutsk |

Russia

Russian

Behind the scenes

In Yakutsk-one of the coldest cities in the world, in eastern Siberia-I imagined a child saying to me: “Draw me a smile.” A smile capable of warming hearts numbed by the cold.

The request seems simple… Yet it is an exercise I find particularly difficult. No line can truly capture the warmth of a received smile, and it is unusual to isolate a smile from the rest of the face-which is what I attempted to do in the illustration.

My inspiration also comes from The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry, when he asks, “Draw me a sheep.” Beneath the simplicity, a deeper meaning emerges here as well, as the passage of time lingers in the background.

This text and its illustration were born from that attempt: to capture a fleeting moment of happiness and to rediscover the spontaneity of a child for whom the world is simple and beautiful.

Echoes of the world

Russian is a surprisingly musical language. Listen to the sound within these words from the text: ulybka (улыбка – “smile”), schastye (счастье – “happiness,” pronounced shas-tye), mir (мир – “world,” but also “peace”). I am particularly fond of the word shapka (шапка – a fur hat), which seems to wrap around the cold when spoken aloud.

Now try reading the title: Na-ri-SUY mne u-LYB-ku. If you enjoy it, I invite you to read the rest of the text aloud, to savour and appreciate (I hope!) its rhymes and sounds.

In my illustration, the word “smile” appears in several forms. In Russian, a noun changes depending on its role in the sentence-this is the principle of declension. Ulybka (улыбка) transforms and can take multiple forms depending on its place in the sentence-ulybki, ulybku, ulybkoy, ulybkie, ulybok, ulybkam, ulybkami, ulybkakh… The word shifts, but the emotion remains.

Listen to an audio excerpt of the text