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.