Klara Persson

Klara: Some years ago I had a picture on the wall in my kitchen. I don’t remember who made it, but it said ‘Love Letters’. Under the headline was the alphabet on one of those black signs where restaurants write their menus with white removable letters.

I put the picture on my wall as inspiration and because I agree with the sentiment. I love typography and words. And I wanted to make a story on that theme. It was also a good way to spend time painting a variety of letters; I wanted a book full of them. (On the endpapers I even placed random letters on pillars, as some kind of tribute to them.)

‘Orden var är ni?’ (Words, where are you?) is about words and love. The main character, Solvej wants to declare her love to the other character, Vanten. She has words and letters for it in her stomach but they can’t find their way out.

Solvej tries to make the words fly out by coughing and clearing her throat, and by hanging upside down on a swing. When that doesn’t work she goes looking for words around her that she can use instead. Walking through the city, she finds words like ‘café’, ‘open’, ‘welcome’, ‘sale’, ‘discount’, and ‘special offer’. These are not perfect words for her purpose.

She looks inside a book at the library, but only finds words like ‘flour’, ‘cinnamon’, ‘sugar’, and ‘cup’. She likes these words, but they are not exactly what she needs at the moment.

Solvej figures that it might be easier to use short words. But since it’s a big thing she wants to say, maybe she needs to find a very big word that she can use. Unfortunately, it turns out that long words can so easily become a mess and get tangled up in one another.

Solvej’s struggle continues.

I don’t do precise sketches for my final illustrations, but I know early on what is going to be told on each spread. The images just fall into place during the development process; I choose which things to use depending on which ones are drawn in the right way and with the right expression.

I draw everything with my favourite black pencil. Then I make painted versions of the drawings I like most. My favourites are scanned and added to the illustrations in Photoshop. After that comes the long process of adding, removing and moving around the separate objects.

I work on several illustrations at the same time. I spend some time on one, than some time on another, then I go back to the first one again. I switch around like this so I can look at the wholeness of the spreads and zoom in to certain details.

A lot of time is also spent seeing how the different pages relate to each other, the ‘flow’ of the book, and the structure.

In this book I’ve allowed myself to draw things I wanted to in the moment. Houses became one of those things. And trees without leaves. I simply had fun making the illustrations and that was reason enough to continue. It’s a nice contrast to the more analytic planning of a story.

One of the things I enjoy most is making funny figures and animals. I couldn’t resist putting some of these into this book too. To make the two main characters stand out and be the main focus, I made all these ‘background figures’ grey.

It was important for me to have a light and positive feeling throughout the book. I wanted to present a playful world of words for the children and adults around them.

Illustrations © Klara Persson.

Buy this picturebook

Orden var är ni? /
Words, where are you?

Klara Persson

Urax förlag, Sweden, 2015

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Solvej wants to explain to Vanten how dearly she loves her. But the words are all gone! So Solvej sets off in search of the right letters and words to use. She tries small words and big ones. Nothing happens. Maybe Solvej could try whispering the words: “I like you more than badminton”.

‘Words, where are you?’ is a charming story about trying to express how much you love someone.