Illustrating “Beogradski ćilim”: a flying carpet over Belgrade
How we brought Ana Pavlović’s children’s book to life — a soft watercolour world where three friends, a rabbit, a dog and a wonderfully grumpy snail ride a Pirot kilim over the rooftops of Belgrade.
Some books ask for a careful, literal hand. Others ask you to remember what it felt like to be eight years old on a park bench, certain that something magical was about to happen. “Beogradski ćilim” by Ana Pavlović is firmly the second kind — and illustrating it was a joy.
What the book is about
It’s a Belgrade story — but a Belgrade story with a flying carpet. Three friends, Isa, Anja and Dika, spend their afternoons on a worn-out bench above the river, the kind of bench you claim as your own. With them are Čibe the dog, Tresimir the rabbit, and — picked up one autumn afternoon from under the bench — a small, magnificently grumpy snail named Gojko, who absolutely refuses to be carried.
One windy afternoon they realise the moment is right, and race across Branko’s Bridge and down to Kosančićev venac to catch a ćilim — a real Pirot kilim, two-by-two, “not from Persia, classic Pirot” — for a flight over the city. What follows is a warm, funny, slightly chaotic adventure about friendship, imagination, and believing in “everything that is strange.”
How we illustrated it
The text is gentle and a little dreamy, so the art had to be too. We worked in soft watercolour with a visible hand-drawn line — loose washes for the autumn light, warm oranges and dusty greens, characters with room to be expressive rather than perfectly polished. Belgrade itself is a character: the rivers, the bridge, the skyline kept recognisable but soft, the way a city looks in a child’s memory.
Across the book we kept the cast consistent — same faces, same proportions, same colour palette from the first page to the last, so young readers always know exactly who they’re looking at. Every piece was drawn by hand in Photoshop and Illustrator, page by page, and delivered as print-ready files alongside the editable source.
Want a book like this?
Children’s books are one of our favourite things to make. We illustrate the interior with consistent characters, design the cover, and build the fixed-layout eBook and the print files to your printer’s spec — all under one roof, with a fixed quote before we start. Send us the story and the age range and we’ll tell you the right format and the price.