The Artist’s Magazine – October 2019

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68 Artists Magazine October 2019


T


hroughout his
career, Alain
Corbel has told
numerous stories
by means of his
sequential art—
namely via comic
books—but it’s
the stories he has collected for book-
making projects and nonprofit
efforts in Africa that have had the
most impact on him.

STUDYING THE ART
OF STORYTELLING
“I never thought I’d go to Africa,
ever,” says Corbel, who was born
in Brittany, France, and currently
lives in Baltimore where he teaches
sequential art, illustration and visual
journalism courses at the Maryland
Institute College of Art (MICA). It was
a long and winding road to Africa. At
the start of his career, he attended
a fine arts school in his hometown,
but just for one year. “It didn’t go very
well; I was too obsessed with sequen-
tial art,” Corbel says.
He moved to Brussels, Belgium,
in 1988, to attend the Institut Saint-
Luc, where he studied for three years
in the comic strip department. “There
I learned how to correctly pace a story
for a graphic novel,” the artist says.
“All of the fine art techniques, though,
like watercolor, I learned mostly on
my own.”
On breaks, he visited a friend who
lived in Madrid, and it was there that
Corbel spotted the Spanish magazine,
Madriz. “It was a very good example of
what could be done professionally. It
was really beautiful—nice format, nice
paper, nice design,” says Corbel, who
also was impressed with its more pro-
gressive themes. “At the time, it had
been 10 years since the death of
Spanish dictator Francisco Franco,
and so many young people were doing
amazing things in painting and music.
My concern was that we needed to see
more sequential art.”
That publication inspired Mokka
and Pelure Amère, the first comics
magazines that Corbel produced with
friend and fellow Saint-Luc graduate
Eric Lambé. “The goal wasn’t just to
publish our own work, but also the

Washing clothes and
cleaning fi sh are some of
the everyday activities
Corbel sought to capture
for the book Ilhas de Fogo,
sometimes in very quick
pencil sketches, other
times in watercolor or ink
wash drawings.
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