Jochen Gerner, French Illustrator


"I like to work with simple shapes and lines. The simplest images are often the most effective and direct…The paper texture and format of the notebooks are important to me. The very graphic and varied lines allow me to integrate them by transparency in my drawings. It is a constraint from the start but it helps me to structure the forms and it is an integral part of the drawing."



Oiseaux is an aviary of 200 drawings made by Jochen Gerner between February 2019 and September 2020. Each of these birds was drawn with pigmented Indian ink felt pens on small-format school notebooks from China and India, on which lines and squares of different sizes appear.

This series of drawings constitutes a graphic experiment aimed at exploring the potential of the grid, the superimposition of lines and the association of a reduced number of colours in the creation of feathers. By mixing dreamed and real birds, this inventory questions the links between the imaginary and reality in our daily lives, and teaches us that the fantastic is often to be found in the reality of everyday life.


















Dogs is a kennel of 200 drawings made by Jochen Gerner between 2021 and 2023, following his study of birds. 

This series of drawings follows the graphic experiment of Jochen Gerner to explore all the potentialities of the grids, lines and colours in the representation of textures and hair. Focusing on dogs, which Jochen Gerner represents in a touching and very funny multiplicity, this collection reveals us that hardly nothing is required on paper for these dogs to breathe, each of them in an outstanding singularity. Braces, squares, lozenges, waves… The colorful patterns cut and cross each other with a disconcerting, always innovative simplicity to make their hair shine and ripple.