Vladimir Gvozdariki

Illustrations © Vladimir Gvozdev at the Gvozdariki site. There are also wonderful dolls, animations and paintings at the website of this artist from Almaty, Kazakhstan Moscow. The above illustrations are not representative of his other work or at least, he demonstrates some contrasting styles let's say. Excellent stuff!
An article from 2002 - dead link and wrong artist (there is another artist named Vladimir Gvozdev who lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan).
[Updated information comes from the artist - the one from Moscow]