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Maurizio Quarello
Italy
Maurizio Quarello was born in Turin, where he studied graphic design, architecture and illustration. He's illustrated over thirty books for publishers such as Orecchio Acerbo, Sarbacane, Rouergue, Barbara Fiore, Milan, Sterling, Kumon, SM and Gerstenberg. Maurizio has received many awards including an Andersen and IBBY Silverstar.
In this post, Maurizio shares some striking illustrations from ‘Mio padre il grande pirata’ (My father the great pirate). The poignant story by Davide Cali was inspired by those who left Italy seeking a better life after World War II, and by the Marcinelle mining disaster in 1956. The book was originally published in Italian by Orecchio Acerbo, and is soon to be published in English by Wilkins Farago.
Maurizio: Since this is a fairly complex story in which there are many characters and lots of things happening, I decided to use a comic strip format on many of the pages by creating illustrations within cartoon panels. This allowed me to make the development of the scenes more cinematic and dynamic. The illustration technique I chose for the book is also close to the comic strip: pencil, hematite and inks.
It was an interesting challenge for me to illustrate this book. When the father of the child protagonist comes home, he tells his son that he's a pirate and describes his various adventures on the high seas with his crew – when in reality, the father works as a miner abroad. The truth is revealed about halfway through the book, so I had to come up with a series of tricks to depict real miners who looked like pirates, and give the impression of them doing pirate things. Here and there in the first part, there are objects, facts and clues which come up again later and help to reconstruct the story – and also contribute to the game that is created between writer, illustrator and reader.
In addition, the story takes place in three different time periods and over a number of years. This set me the problem of underlining the passage of time and of differentiating the three different periods. I decided to do this by using a different colour palette depending on the background and atmosphere. So in the first part, when the father describes his fantastic adventures, the colours are warm, bright and cheerful – mainly red and yellow. In the second part, when the child discovers the truth after his father has a serious accident in the mine, the palette becomes cold and the colours gloomy – grey and blue. In the last part, which takes place in the present, the colours become more realistic.
Illustrations © Maurizio Quarello. Post translated by Gengo and edited by dPICTUS.
Mio padre il grande pirata /
My father the great pirate
Davide Cali & Maurizio Quarello
Orecchio Acerbo, Italy, 2013
The amazing stories Dad tells of life with his pirate crew fire up his young son's imagination. But then, one year, Dad doesn't return home.
Now it's his son's turn to make an amazing journey of his own – to find his father. Soon, he will discover a secret beyond anything he has imagined so far.
A poignant story about imagination and reality.
