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In the Studio: Gérard DuBois

December 10, 2025

Gérard DuBois says that, for him, home is where the art is. And at the moment, home is across the river from downtown Montreal. ‘I’ve always worked from my house,’ says the French artist, who is the illustrator of Folio’s edition of Calvino’s Italian Folktales. ‘I worked in my bedroom when I was a student, then my kitchen, then a mezzanine, which wasn’t practical when my children were small. Now I’m in a conservatory on the side. It makes getting to work easy – I just go down two steps.’

His 5m x 5m studio has glass walls on three sides, so outside temperatures of lower than –15°C sometimes force him back inside the house to draw. But this also means he can have breakfast and, occasionally, lunch with his sons, Nathan, 15, and Thomas, 20, and his wife, Stephanie, if they’re around. ‘I’ve never been the kind to work all night,’ he says. ‘I work a normal day, from 8.30am to 6.30pm – it’s best for my family and for my mind.’

Artwork by DuBois’s friends jostles for space on the one solid wall of the studio, and he has ‘many, many’ shelves – some freestanding, others lining the wall beneath the windows. ‘I keep old objects on them: a die, a wooden stick, an old toy that used to belong to the kids. And, of course, books. But there are so many, they’re also piled on the furniture and in boxes on the floor.’

He works, seated, at one of two desks, ‘one covered in brushes, pencils, paints and the fountain pens and ink I sketch with, and one that has only a scanner and my computer’. He begins at the first desk, sketching a reading of the book he’s illustrating, then moves to his computer, where, five years ago, he started using Photoshop for colour in the same way he used to paint.

When it came to Italian Folktales, with its adult themes, DuBois says he didn’t change the process, but was just slightly more cautious. ‘Drawing an explicit, gory image for the sake of it does not interest me at all. What interests me is how it’s unveiled to the reader. I enjoy the challenge of finding solutions, searching for an idea that will reflect the tale with a design that gets your attention. When I draw I mostly have fun with shapes and composition, trying to mess things up so the message is a bit twisted – not too much, but just enough so you get it at the second sight.’

Although his work has been published in titles such as Time, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and The New York Times, the majority of his book work is for children – which, he says, is what makes a commission from Folio so special. ‘You know that Folio readers have a certain culture and that gives you a lot of freedom to have big ideas. These are the kind of books I’ve always wanted to do – not just beautiful objects but creating a specific version of a story I’ve enjoyed – it sums up everything for me.’