Artist Studio

In The Studio: Olivier Leger

The process for producing my drawings is liberal. I have a vague idea about what I want to produce but then just express my imagination through playful drawings, doodles and swirls. This frequently involves transforming animals into fantastical creatures and planets with their own ecosystems and habitats living on their surfaces or inside and amongst them.

Tortue Géniale, pen on paper (work-in-progress), 106 x 64 cm

I work with fine pens, usually using tips ranging between 0.03 – 0.05mm. It helps me achieve intense levels of detail and allows me focus meticulously on tiny areas and draw creatures from the very big to the very small.

Tortue Géniale (detail)

I find it curious to mess around with scale through manipulating frames of reference. For example, Tortue Géniale depicts a scene of a mix of sea creatures all of whom defy the regular conventions of size. Having no direct frame of reference to use to compare and judge the scale of the animals makes you wonder: are these creatures mammoth or are they tiny? The fantastical nature of the creatures in the image becomes evident. I like to think that messing around with proportions in this a manner is a great way to help stimulate the imagination.

It’s nature and the environment which inspires me. It might sound a bit presumptious to say that I’d like my work to raise awareness toward conservation, and promote better attitudes of our society toward living sustainably with our planet. I’m not sure whether it does that or not. But it is certainly these beliefs and values that manifest in my drawings.