A poster illustration much like a book cover to the poem Ruslan and Ludmila by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. It’s a warm-paletted drawing of two figures. The figure in the front is a young woman with light skin and striking dark eyes and long reddish-blonde hair. She wears a jeweled headband and holds an irregular incurve chrysanthemum. The man in the background is a knight with white-blonde hair, a handlebar mustache, and pale blue eyes. He is dressed all in red and brandishes a sword. An eagle, appearing like a golden coat of arms, appears on his shoulder.
The pale-blonde shoulder rides a reddish horse over a field of spears and corpses beneath a soft orange evening sky while a falcon flies overhead. The bones and skulls lie amongst discarded armor and weapons, and elegant wild vegetation blooms all around them, overtaking them.
A knight dressed all in red atop a ruddy brown approaches a giant severed head appearing to grow out of the ground, its mustache and hair tangling into roots affixing it into the ground. The giant head appears to be wearing a giant horned helm.
Two images of the same young woman, evidently in some sequence. She is golden-blonde. In one image she is seated on a carpet amid a generous spread of delicious-looking fruits and wines nestled among serene wildflowers. Above her is a golden ornament. In another image she is looking at herself in a mirror, wearing a tall dark hat, apparently pilfered from a small goblin-looking man who appears stunned to see her wearing it.
Ngl, the reason I wanted to finally read Ruslan and Ludmila by Alexander Pushkin was because I wanted to know what the heck was going on in these Gennady Novozhilov illustrations. It did not disappoint.