The fact that printing books has become so cheap is not necessarily an advantage. Whatever an illustrator wants in terms of color, detail and texture: everything seems to be possible in picture books. Yet there are more and more illustrators who opt for less.
A publisher that has a very outspoken policy on this is the three-year-old Boycott. The interesting and challenging books of this fund are immediately recognizable in the store. The recently published The valley (Boycott; € 24.99; 6+) is a good example of this.
The concept behind this Dutch debut by the French illustrator and artist Anne-Hélène Dubray is very simple: we see the same valley over the centuries and even in the future. The design seems a bit unruly at first. For example, the highly simplified perspective is not entirely correct: it always shows people and animals from the side. It’s like looking at a two-dimensional diorama.
She also uses a limited number of pastel colours, which are soft in themselves, but in relation to each other constantly contrast differently and sometimes even swear. This keeps the viewer curiously looking for new combinations. What seemed distant and simple, on closer inspection, turns out to be entertaining, generous and hospitable.
A similar delayed experience is offered by the idiosyncratic work of the young visual artist and illustrator Joren Joshua. He made a striking debut with zeb. (Querido, 2018), written by Gideon Samson, which was awarded a Silver Brush. In this book he only used the colors black, yellow and orange. For Boeli & Mumi and the fantastic journey to the beginning of the morning (Lannoo; € 15.99; 5+), with lyrics by rapper Pepijn Lanen, he opted for a palette of somewhat darker colours. While their parents are still sleeping, Boeli and Mumi look for breakfast in the still unlit house. That turns out to be quite an adventure. Joshua’s visual world has a logic of its own: a parrot can be brown when it suits, the handle of a razor can swing like a snake.
In the case of artist and picture book maker Hedy Tjin, the choice of color has not only an artistic one, but also a political one. Tjin, partly of Surinamese descent, wants to show more and different colors in children’s books than the usual. She gains inspiration for this during her travels, especially in Suriname. With writer Henna Goudzand Nahar she made On the back of Bigi Kayman (Querido; €16.99; 6+), about the enslaved children Afi and Kofi, who escape on the back of a large, mythical crocodile. Tjin never uses black, not even in the letters of the text.
It’s amazing how Tjin manages to bring so much atmosphere to her work with limited resources: the bright afternoon light on the sugar plantation, the velvet twilight in other places, in the shade of the jungle and at a campfire or at sunset. At the same time, the hair of the heroes is not black but purple and at the printer also finished with fluorescent pink.
The working method for both illustrators was created by circumstances. Joshua learned the trade as a graffiti artist, who has to choose carefully which aerosol cans go into the backpack and then make do with them. Tjin’s signature style began with the pack of twelve markers she carried in her suitcase when traveling. The restrictions forced them to play with unorthodox choices.
What these picture book makers seem to want to achieve, besides their own pleasure with puzzles, is to stimulate the imagination by limiting resources. They are books that you look at longer, precisely because they are apparently kept simple. As if there is more through less.