Illustration: Woah. Spellbinding illustration from Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva

Woah. We just discovered Masha K’s work and now I don’t even know what my life has been until now. To me her drawings tell a story in which the world has been taken over by perspective-distoring chemicals and the already-contaminated children have been evacuated to far off lands where the plants are large and kindly, the owls bring light and the gravity levels are low. And it’s incredible.

We see a lot of illustration at It’s Nice That which is such a treat, but sometimes you really crave to be knocked sideways on to a different planet by someone’s work. I feel that Masha has sent me reeling into a chaotic limbo somewhere in between the feelings you get when you read Enid Blyton books or when you have a very strong urge to draw a picture. To think that there’s a whole pop up book just begging to be published on her website is a crime against bookmaking. If no one else publishes it, I bloody well will.