Le loup et les sept chevreaux

For this new version of the popular German fairytale related by the Grimm brothers, Christian Roux has coped jolly well with his story of a nanny goat and her kids, to make his young readers scare to death. To achieve his aim, he has used all available means. Months spent toiling over the concept of illustrations, entirely worked out in black lead, by hand, which were then scanned and transferred onto Photoshop when the time had come to place the colors.

At first sight, his work seems simple whereas it is in fact highly elaborate, much thought over. No showing off, nor any mannerism for this artist who likes to go straight to the point, the better to strike people’s minds and help the story along. In his drawings, one is at once seduced by the transparency effects, the blurring of the outlines, the grain and choice of colors, reduced to their strict minimum: a gradation of green, of red and a timid yellow. Not forgetting the spectacular black, embodying his terrifying wolf, ready to resort to every trick in order to crunch the seven kids. As well as the black of shadows and of the oversized scissors, which send shivers down our spines.

From these illustrations, there comes forth a captivating tension, a touching mystery that is due to the manner in which Christian Roux has managed to compose very graphic images, with a great economy of details, and with a cinematic aestheticism. The alternance of close-ups and broad images, of travellings and of zooms, combine to make the quiet universe of the young herbivores and of their super-star mummy goat topple over into the utmost chaos, until the well wrought vengeance and the happy end!

Amélie de Turckheim, February, 2015