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Questions to think about before creating the book

  • Before we start the E - Book 

     

    • Think about the song you are going to analyze from the perspective of the foreign listener

    • Do you know all the important images/events/participants that were mentioned there?  

    • What is the significance of those symbols ( should they be depicted in your illustrations or not) If yes, will it be a modern variant or traditional?

    • If  it is a traditional one what is the difference between your version of illustration  and the previous ones?

    • How can you put into your drawing the melody, rhythm, harmony, stress, and instrumentation of the song? Is a melody helpful or confusing for you?

    • What is the key word, symbol, metaphor, or another figure of the particular verse/line? How is the meaning connected to your common interpretation? 

    • How do you express pain, joy, sorrow, pathos, love, music, dance, beauty, motion, and so on through drawing? What kinds of curves, lines, shapes, or extra colour do you use to create a dialogue between you and the recipients?

    • Why and in what way do people in folk songs use animals, nature, and everyday objects?

    • Is there any chance to be devout if you reduce the color world to black and white? 

    • What is the main problem with the chosen folk song? What is the position of the lyric subject (lyric hero) in relation to the main problem? Can you see any progress in his position? 

    • What happened before the song started? What goes next? If there is any character, do you know, where she/was born, who her/his parents are, and what she/he had for breakfast this morning? Why is she/he in this song?

    • What is the actual meaning of the song for me? Why did we decide to elect particular songs? What does the song actually say these days?

  • We would like to share our reflections about...

    Vika Kovtun

    1.From a foreign listener's point of view, I understand some of the words because of the similarities in languages, so I understand the approximate meaning of the song. The melody also conveys the mood of the song.
    2. Yes, it's the horse, the doves, the linden and the Slovaks.
    3.A horse is determination, valor, freedom,beauty, majesty, doves are love, linden is love and fidelity. Yes, I think these symbols should be depicted in the illustrations in the traditional version.
    4.I think each person can portray the same thing in a completely different way.
    5.I think it is possible to convey melody, rhythm, harmony and accent through form and colour. A melody can help give a mood to a drawing.
    6.I think the main symbols of this song are two doves, which symbolise two Slovaks in love.

    Vika Kovtun

    7.Pain is dark and cold colours, joy on the contrary is light and warm,sadness is grey, love is smooth lines and warm colours, music and dance are broken lines, beauty - light and airy lines, movement - a lively, impetuous line.
    8.People use animals in folk songs as symbols to evoke association. For example, the pair of doves is associated with a pair of people.
    9.In my opinion, colors play a very important role in how we perceive the world, so no.
    10.I didn't see a problem in this song.

    Vika Kovtun

    11. Before the song started, the horse could rest in the shade of a linden tree and afterwards too :) I know that the boy's and girl's parents are Slovak and they were born in Slovakia, but I can only guess about the breakfast. I think it was one of the Slovak national dishes. The horse was probably less fortunate in terms of breakfast :( The boy and girl are the main characters in this song, but the horse, the linden tree and the doves are the symbols.
    12.We chose "On the mountain reapers reap" because it is a song about defending one's homeland. Previously this mission was carried out by the Cossacks, now by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Therefore, that song is still relevant today.

    Rudenko Ihor

    1.Think about the song you are going to analyze from the perspective of the foreign listener.

    From the point of view of a foreign listener, of course a bunch of things in a song of another nation will most likely be incomprehensible. Even if the general meaning is clear, some individual things will go unnoticed. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the symbols and images. Then the picture becomes clear.

    Rudenko Ihor

    2.Do you know all the important images/events/participants that were mentioned there?

    After searching for the main images, everything became clear. In the song we disassemble - "she dug a well", there are a peacock and a girl near the well.

    Rudenko Ihor

    3.What is the significance of those symbols ( should they be depicted in your illustrations or not) If yes, will it be a modern variant or traditional?

    As far as I understand, the peacock mascot helps to bring joy and luck to the house, and makes the owner wiser and more successful. This may be one of the reasons why the girl turned to him. Of course, they should be shown in the picture. Personally, I prefer the traditional style.

    Rudenko Ihor

    4.If it is a traditional one what is the difference between your version of illustration and the previous ones?

    Of course, you can see things in common with predecessors, but I think that everyone brings something special. We are not creating anything new, we are just compiling what we have seen before.

    Rudenko Ihor

    5.How can you put into your drawing the melody, rhythm, harmony, stress, and instrumentation of the song? Is a melody helpful or confusing for you?

    Using major and minor colors :) Melody on the contrary helps to understand the mood.

    Rudenko Ihor

    6.What is the key word, symbol, metaphor, or another figure of the particular verse/line? How is the meaning connected to your common interpretation?

    [:povedzže mi, milá, holubienka sivá,
    ktorého si pána.:]
    It is in this line that mentioning the owner can mean dependence on someone. Another meaning is fidelity. This line gives a complete picture of the whole song.

    Rudenko Ihor

    7.How do you express pain, joy, sorrow, pathos, love, music, dance, beauty, motion, and so on through drawing? What kinds of curves, lines, shapes, or extra colour do you use to create a dialogue between you and the recipients?

    I will use standard understandable moves, lines and colors.

    Rudenko Ihor

    8.Why and in what way do people in folk songs use animals, nature, and everyday objects?

    There are two sides to this use: nature, animals and life are close to everyone and therefore it will be easy to understand the meaning of the work. But in particular, nature and life are perfectly familiar to a particular people or nation, they may be embedded in a metaphor or meaning. Therefore, for some they may be incomprehensible. Often nature and life are associated only with certain people or nation.

    Rudenko Ihor

    9.Is there any chance to be devout if you reduce the color world to black and white?

    Using only black and white has always been and will be a standard and practical option for drawing. So why not?

    Rudenko Ihor

    10.What is the main problem with the chosen folk song? What is the position of the lyric subject (lyric hero) in relation to the main problem? Can you see any progress in his position?

    The main problem of the song is loyalty or dependence on someone. The main lyrical hero in relation to the problem is only the addressee. Progression of his position: digging a well - watering a peacock - talking to a peacock.

    Rudenko Ihor

    12.What is the actual meaning of the song for me? Why did we decide to elect particular songs? What does the song actually say these days?

    For me personally, the meaning of this song is harmony with nature, because the girl was talking to a peacock. Nowadays, this is also relevant, because there are many animal lovers and advocates, but unfortunately also many offenders.

    Levadnyj Sashko

    1. I think that folk songs are quite hard for foreign understanding due to cultural context. Even though Ukrainian and Slovak are related cultures, I still had to listen in few times to understand whole meaning (and still I'm not sure whether I understand it fully or not).

    Levadnyj Sashko

    3. As far as I see, there's 3 significant images in our song: the Horse, the Linden Tree and Doves. All of them are Slovak, which is emphasized in the song. And also, each of them has some internal meaning, which was built on their image. We'll try to picture significant moments from the song traditionally.

    Levadnyj Sashko

    5. It is expressed with forms, lines and colors. Major melodies can be rather colorful images with a lot of forms, while minor should be less colorful with less figures.

    Levadnyj Sashko

    7. I'm not really good at drawing, but this kind of art can be very expressive. Emotions can be shown with particular colors and figures, like I said in 5th questions. But unlike melody, emotions can be expressed «uncontrolled» - by which I mean that artist can draw his picture just from his wild imagination.

    Levadnyj Sashko

    10. It's actually interesting that we have not 1, but few characters. It's hard to call them «lyrical heroes», but nevertheless it's still main images of this song. They're static characters, still they're showing idea of being Slovaks in the song.

    Karin Kriššáková

    Is there any chance to be devout if you reduce the color world to black and white?
    There is a posibility to be devouted, but it's really slight and not everyone has it, but if we percepted the world in those two colors our whole life we would surelly be able to.

    What is the significance of those symbols ( should they be depicted in your illustrations or not) If yes, will it be a modern variant or traditional?
    This depends mostly on the choosen part of the song if it has some of the most important symbols, but I'm going to try to put it in there somewhere and I will try to make it as traditional as possible, but I may ad something modern as well.

    Karin Kriššáková

    How can you put into your drawing the melody, rhythm, harmony, stress, and instrumentation of the song? Is a melody helpful or confusing for you?
    You can put it in using different colors, maybe draw some lines or use an opposite backround. At the begining I found the melody quite confusing but I think that I'm starting to understand it better.

    Zinchenko Myroslava

    5. The melody definitely helps us. Melody and rhythm can be represented by certain colors, for example a slow and positive melody can be represented by bright or pastel colors, and a fast, sharp melody.

    7. For example, pain can be expressed through dark colors and thin twisted lines. Joy can be expressed in bright colors such as yellow or red. Love can be expressed by thick wavy lines using pink color.

    Mariya Denysenko

    2. In order to understand all the symbols, events, heroes, we need to delve deeper into the history of writing. Before I knew the history of writing, I didn’t know a huge part of the characters and participants in the song.

    4. Regardless of the type of image, we can say that our illustrations will be very different. Each person sees in his own way, feels in his own way. So everyone will convey the meaning in different ways. Someone can metaphorically convey hidden symbols, and someone will do it directly.

    Mariya Denysenko

    3. Tree is a symbol of stability, development, vitality. There were never any trees on the Kraljevo Hole. This means that the tree in the song can symbolize fight to the death, trying to save life.. Starry sky symbolizes eternity. At the end of the song, the hero says that the starry sky is his bride. This may mean that the man has died, gone into eternity. A cannonball can be a symbol of power.The fact that a man’s fiancée is now a cannonball may tell us that something very powerful, something stronger, has taken him.
    I think it is important to specify all these symbols and give people “food” for thought.

    Zinchenko Myroslava

    8. With the help of nature, people convey meaning. For example, birch can be a symbol of fragility, and oak is a symbol of courage and strength. The lion is the symbol of courage and strength, the fox is the symbol of cunning, the snake is the symbol of eternity.
    9. I don’t think so. Moreover, the life of every person should “play” with bright colors. And if we talk about drawings, bright colors are an important tool, because with the help of colors can convey all of feelings.

    Mariya Denysenko

    10. The main problem is that the man dies because of the wound, but he fights to the death. Nevertheless, he understands that death is inevitable. This allows him to accept and say goodbye to everyone. Obviously, the man does not manage to survive, so there is no progress.
    11. I think that before the song started there was a war in which soldiers participated. Probably it was a Sumava soldier. We do not know any more personal information. This person is the hero of the song because his story is sad.
    12. We chose this song because it is relevant today. It is sung all to raise the spirits of Ukrainians and set only on the good. I think it’s important that the whole world knows this song and hope that every nation has a motivational song.