Artists Magazine - USA (2019-10)

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drawingsbasedonmypicturesand
sketches.ThereI couldusebetter-
qualitypaperandwatercolor.”
Whentraveling,Corbelworkswith
inexpensive,easilytransportable
materialssuchas“ballpointpens,and
paperandsketchbooksmadefor

ON KEEPING

PORTRAITS

CREATIVE

“I started out doing some very

academic portraits, but then

I thought, ‘That’s just boring,’”

says Corbel of his fi rst attempts

at painting the faces from the

places he’d visited. “So, I started

using unexpected colors, like

painting a pink African woman

instead of brown. I try to keep

the work light, elegant and

sometimes surprising.”

ABOVE
This Corbel watercolor
landscape (from Ilhas de Fogo)
features a Santomean roça,
a plantation on São Tomé and
Príncipe, an island country in
the Gulf of Guinea off the coast
of Central Africa.

LEFT
This watercolor portrait
features the leader in a Muslim
community on the Island of
Mozambique, off northern
Mozambique, that appears in
Ilhas de Fogo.

kids—tools that, if I lost them, it

wouldn’t be a big deal.”

After collaborating with Mendes,

Corbel approached his publisher in

Portugal—who also published the late

Portuguese writer José Saramago,

winner of the Nobel Prize for

Literature in 1998—about creating

a set of illustrated books featuring

the places he’d been, but “made by

Africans, not Europeans.” This pro-

posal led to Corbel’s return to Africa,

and additional illustrated book proj-

ects kept taking him back.

He worked with the people of

Guinea-Bissau to make Notícias do

Quelele (meaning “news from Quelele,”

a neighborhood there). Each chapter

covers a cultural topic, from the dry

season to hair design. “Because of

that book, I was commissioned by