Kaatje Vermeire

Kaatje: Jack is a collector. He collects all kinds of stuff that people from the village drop near his house, where he lives on his own with only his little dog, his birds, and the sounds of nature for company. As an inventor, he creates all kinds of things with these ‘lost’ materials. Although Jack seems like a bit of an outcast and a loner, he is actually quite sophisticated, intelligent and satisfied with his moderate way of living. One day, things are turned upside down when Jack discovers a suitcase full of old postcards. There's one that grabs his attention because of the mysterious message from a girl on the back of the card: "I'm in heaven, it's great here!" From that moment on, Jack knows that there is another world, far away, outside of his piles and stacks... He starts dreaming of other horizons and invents ways to get up to the clouds.

This is a philosophical story about letting go of the things you know and are familiar with, about holding on to dreams, about dealing with disappointment, and about imagination and ‘travelling’ inside your own head. The end, of course, I will not reveal. You need to buy the book to find out!

I immediately liked this text by Bas Rompa because of the high degree of identification and self-recognition; I am a huge collector myself! So it was quite easy for me to imagine the world of Jack by just looking at my own surroundings and the piles of objects in my atelier. I wanted to present Jack as an elderly person, but not old or dusty – a man full of energy, humour and imagination. As I often base my characters on people I know, I chose a client from the butchers I worked at for several years. He is a characteristic proud man with a white moustache and a lazy eye that looks the other way slightly. I find this to be very beautiful, but didn't add it to my character because it would have made him look a bit crazy – and I didn't want that.

As for the landscapes, they could be situated in Scandinavia, as well as here in our Belgian woods. I wanted this vast, wide endlessness to be in great contrast to Jack's limited habitat.

As there is only one human character in the book, I thought it would be very boring to see Jack on every page, so I invented a little companion for him: a Jack Russell dog. For variety, I also tried to play with the perspective and I included some humour.

I spend a lot of time making sketches of my characters, drawing them in all kinds of poses. I took some photographs of the real Jack and then I started drawing. I found some of the poses hard to draw, so I asked my boyfriend to pose for me. The sketches I make are often monotypes on old, brown paper. I fear the white page, and monotype gives me more confidence and enables me to experiment more. It also causes stains and ‘noise’ on the paper, which happens by pure coincidence and immediately gives the drawings a certain atmosphere. I often like these sketches more than the end results because of their roughness, power and spontaneity.

After the sketches, I cut my separate figures and landscapes out of offset plates and make dry etchings out of them. I then print them all separately with my etching press. I scan all these elements into the computer and put them in separate layers in Photoshop. I then enlarge or decrease the elements in order to get the right composition for the text. My final illustrations are a combination of dry etchings, acrylic painting, coloured pencils and digital consolidation.

At the moment, my sketches and research for Jack the Stacker are part of an exhibition in Hasselt together with other Belgian illustrators. The aim of the exhibition is to give visitors a glimpse at the workplace of illustrators and authors though their sketchbooks, working materials, objects and other stuff that inspires them. These photos of my ‘simulated workspace’ show you the things that inspired me to create the illustrations for Jack the Stacker.

Illustrations and photographs © Kaatje Vermeire. Post edited by dPICTUS.

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Japie de stapelaar /
Jack the Stacker

Bas Rompa & Kaatje Vermeire

De Eenhoorn, Belgium, 2012

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Jack is a collector. His house and garden are filled with high stacks of stuff. Sometimes Jack looks at the horizon and dreams of making far journeys. But his collection keeps him at home...

Until one day, he finds a card from somewhere far away. "I'm in the clouds here," it says. That's where Jack wants to be too. The next day, he begins building a huge stack that will take him to the clouds...