TUBERS - Illustrations by Matthias Lechner

Tubers - People who take the Tube, Subway, Metro ...

The subway is a common thread that leads through all the stories. I started the book with the first morning-metro pulling out of the station. The technique for all these pictures is pencil on paper for the line-work and digital for the colors.

London

The first 3 Stories are set in the London Underground. Every section starts with a cityscape.

Lucy's good deed

In a crowded subway car, a beautiful Redhead is harassed by a man in a trench-coat .

Angel Ride

A schoolboy is quietly singing to himself in an angelic voice.

Blue fire

A man becomes obsessed with the nail polish of a girl he meets on the subway.

Paris

The next 3 stories are set in the city of lights.

Fire framed

An american art student starts taking pictures of people on the subway.

Reves des lavatoires publiques

A young musician has hallucinations in a public restroom.

Visaural

Crazy Jaques hears Kandinsky and smells the moon.

New York

The last 3 stories are set in NY.

Helen's Revenge

A protegé finds herself chasing after her stolen cello through the streets of Manhattan.

Tweetybird

An aged one-time-star notices the remix of her old hit on the earphones of a young couple.

Van Gogh

Van Gogh and his Cowboy-friend get chased through the New York Halloween Parade.

This is the last picture - a NY subway in the last sunlight of the day. I had lots of fun doing this book, and I have to thank Dimiter from SIMPLY READ BOOKS for giving me this opportunity, and my wife Sarah for giving me the the weekends to do it...

This is the first book I have illustrated.

I wasn't in contact with the writer, or heard the music of the CD whilst illustrating.

SIMPLY READ gave me pretty much all the freedom in the world.

I approached this project as if I was creating a series of stills for a collection of short films. The moments I chose to illustrate where not the most dramatic, but the quite and reflective ones.

There's something nearly voyeuristic about some of them.

I imagined a different style of music, playing over each image, since music is the other common thread (besides subways) in these stories.

To find the image for each story, I would read it once, and then browse the net for a few hours and collect all kinds of images that would resonate with me.

This was a great way of finding out, what was going on in my subconscious after having read the text.

Afterwards I would collage some of the images, print them out and draw over them on a light table.

I see this as a very modern way of working. Its a kind of remix.

I wanted to have this straight link to reality - Linklater's "Waking Life" inspired me.

Then I colored them digitally - always trying to limit the pallet and to find just enough disharmony to give it a slight weirdness.

My aim was to end up with images that could come out of a dream - real and yet unreal.

The images will be printed on half-transparent paper - so that the text of the stories shines through a little.

That will hopefully even enhance the desired effect.

I did this Project, next to my day job as a animation-designer on evenings and weekends. As hard as that was - I gotta do it again real soon...

I hope you will enjoy these pictures.

As soon as the book is available, I will put up a link.

Simply Read Books