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Chloé Perarnau
France
Chloé Perarnau grew up in the countryside of Lorraine in France, and studied Illustration at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. Since graduating, she’s worked on children’s books, editorial pieces, art workshops and various other projects. In 2013, Chloé created the fanzine, Cuistax, with some other authors and illustrators in Brussels.
In this post, Chloé talks about ‘L’orchestre’ (The Orchestra), a wonderful seek-and-find adventure which takes the reader all around the world in search of missing musicians. This visually stunning picturebook is published in France by L’Agrume.
Chloé: I’m an illustrator (and sometimes author) and work mainly in children’s books, but also for the press and cultural projects.
The book project, ‘The Orchestra: Look and Find Around the World’ was born out of a meeting with the two publishers at L’Agrume. I had already drawn a small series of images for their thematic illustrated review, Citrus.
We really enjoyed working together and they suggested I create a full book.
L’Agrume’s children’s collection has developed around game-books and object-books with varied concepts and worlds. As for me, I had been working for a while on a book called ‘Look and Find’, doing large town scenes; we started on this basis. The idea of creating a world tour came up fairly quickly and I suggested the story of an orchestra conductor who has lost his musicians, as they’ve all gone on holiday on the week of a big concert.
The ‘Look and Find’ concept allowed me to move the conductor character from one picture to the next, from one country to another, and to thus draw different worlds, numerous scenes and details of daily life. Work on the book started off with this test image of Rio de Janeiro.
For all the other destinations, I had to do a lot of image research, on the Internet and in books. I had visited some of the countries and cities before, but not others.
I had wanted to convey in my pictures something quite realistic, with atmosphere and lots of detail. I looked at towns, buildings, people’s clothes, what they did on the street, at home, etc. At times, it was also important to be able to put these studies and images to one side, so I could reclaim each double-page spread and imagine a world of my own.
Each spread was constructed primarily around the architecture of buildings, houses or structures. However, I did sometimes begin with a group of people in the corner of a picture. The most difficult thing for me was having so many ideas for all these characters and mini-stories within the main story. It was painstaking work. In the end, I think it feels like we know every one of these little characters. I love creating this kind of image where many things happen simultaneously, allowing the viewer’s gaze to wander and discover details, and being surprised even after looking at it multiple times. In this book, the viewer’s gaze is slightly high up, but not a full aerial view.
Work on the text happened fairly naturally: In order to improve textual comprehension in the book (which is aimed at children of three and up), we decided to have text in speech bubbles, and in the left corner, a postcard from each musician.
I love writing postcards to my friends and family when I travel. It seemed to me to be a good way to introduce the story through postcards written by musicians to the maestro from their holiday destinations.
I also wanted to depict an orchestra because this is a world I know as a spectator and I find it fascinating. As with a dance troupe, the energy of an orchestra in action intrigues me, particularly in relation to the sometimes solitary work of the illustrator.
Finally, I also wanted to find a poetically subversive way to use instruments, bringing them and the orchestra into the town, among the crowd, a space much larger than that of a concert hall. My characters had to have a little fun, and so did I.
Illustrations © Chloé Perarnau. Post translated by Gengo and edited by dPICTUS.
L’orchestre / The Orchestra
Chloé Perarnau
L’Agrume, France, 2016
The big concert is in one week’s time, but all the musicians have gone on holiday! The conductor and his faithful assistant travel the world to find them – the violinists in Tokyo, the harp player in Porto, the trumpet players in Rio and the flautists in Abidjan...
‘The Orchestra’ is both a narrative and a treasure hunt. Each page features scenes typical of the countries visited, creating an exciting round-the-world trip!
