New Arrival

Vanya Nastanlieva grew up in Bulgaria and is now living in England.

She spent five years in the High School of Applied Art, majoring in Textile and Fashion in 1998.

After graduating she held her first solo exhibition, displaying 63 pieces of oil canvases, watercolor, distemper and black and white drawings. The exhibition led to illustrating Emil Spiridonv’s book, Stories for Wild Animals, which was published in 2000.

Over the years she has worked in different fields such as animation studios, children's magazines and newspapers, greetings card companies, crafts, and painting ceramics. In 2000 she began her studies at the National Academy of Art in Sofia and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2004, specializing in Book and Graphic Design. After graduating, her next workplace was the American company ‘World Wide FX Studio’-‘Nu Image’ in Bulgaria where she was employed as a storyboard and concept artist for the movies: ‘Rin Tin Tin’, ‘Wicker Man’ and other projects.

She recently graduated from the MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art.

One of her final project was highly commended in the Macmillan Prize for Children's Book Illustration 2011.

Sam was happy. Soon he found a wonderful place to live.    

It was almost perfect, except . . .