Dreambook

Jaouen Salaün

Dreams awoken

I’ve filled up quite a few sketchbooks lying in bed in the evenings. I draw for between thirty and ninety minutes before going to sleep almost every night. Nearly all the drawings in this book were done under the same conditions. They were always drawn in one go, without prior penciling, be it with or without a specific plan.
I work on four formats ranging from A6 to A3 with a pilot V5, which is a pen hard enough to be incisive but fine enough to do subtle crosshatching.
The drawings are sometimes directly related to my daytime work, taking a figurative-narrative form or reflecting the emotion of the moment through an exploration of abstract expression. This moment of creativity has its virtues. Firstly, I enjoy the chance to feed my desire to keep on drawing. It is also a moment that lets me transform negative energy (stress, anxiety, frustration) into something tangible. Thus, when I get emotional, I can “turn the page” more easily and move on.
These notebooks are also a sort of spiritual journey for me. It is like meditation. I get lost in the shapes, lines and small details, particularly as I am often in a lethargic state; on the verge of falling asleep. My eyes, the architects of my drawings, fill with sand and slowly close. I then experiment drawing bits with my eyes shut. The intention remains the same, but without my eyes the results are more brutal.

I rarely come back to my drawings. I might refine some curves or outlines or crosshatch some elements to lift them from the page. I like keeping my first attempts. I don’t try to “finish” my drawings. They have a life and a story and translate a specific moment in time. There are recurring themes, you might even say obsessions. You could categorize them into six broad themes. This book is therefore made up of six chapters. The boundaries between the themes are thin and I’ve enjoyed mixing some of them up.

Practicing this form of automatic writing has liberated me creatively. Attached to realistic drawing for many years, I didn’t let myself play about and got way too serious. One day I heard Moebius say that a drawing was never wrong, that you just had to do something else. Since that day I’ve been experimenting every day without constraint, waiting for something to happen. I’ve become a front row spectator of happy chance, convinced that anything is possible. Every night I dream about what I will draw the next day.

Genesis

Next to his work on comics, Jaouen Salaun illustrates his dreams, his thoughts, mostly everything in his brain when he’s left alone.

The result : dreamlike drawings, in turn poetic, scary, sentimental or …wierd!

Organised in six chapters, (dreamlike, Mystical, Mythologic, retro, medival, Science-fiction), this incredible sketchbook makes the reader wander off into worlds that will not leave him unscathed.

Salaün Jaouen is a French illustrator born in Hérault, France, May 7th, 1979. He discovered illustration in late 1995 with Moëbius, Gillon, Bilal, Liberatore and Gimenez, since when he has had a passion for drawing. He studied art at Emile Cohl School from 1999 to 2003.
At the beginning of his career he illustrated textbooks, young adult novels and playing cards, and taught perspective at an interior design school for two years. In 2006 he started in comics with “Nova” based on a story by Julien Blondel. He then created the first volume of the “Carthago Adventures” series, with Christophe Bec writing the story. In 2009 he joined the Pavilion noir agency, as an advertising story-boarder, with whom he still collaborates today.
Between 2014 and 2017 he illustrated the “Eternum” series, once again collaborating with Christophe Bec. Since 2017 he has been working for Carbone magazine, a transmedia project exploring pop culture.