Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, last Saturday I went to an exhibition of my work in a nearby city, Viana do Castelo. It was a lovely experience, deserving of a detailed overview. Thankfully, we have plenty of pictures to do just that.
The Exhibition
The exhibition itself was small but rather nice. It featured me and two other artists: Joana Afonso and André Caetano.
The works exhibited were not original art, but large size, high quality prints which looked stunning live. It was great to see my work blown up to twice its original size and be able to see all the details without having to squint.
The curator - Ricardo Ferreira - asked me to select what I wanted to show and I obviously focused my attention on Phenomena and A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance. Ricardo was in charge of all the printing and layout and he also came up with the brilliant idea of having the books in display, which was a perfect way to connect the final product to what was hanging on the walls.
Righteous Thirst had a selection of covers (including the wraparound cover of the deluxe collection), original scans and pages with the grey tones. You’ll notice the lack of violent pages - that’s due to the exhibit being open to everyone and with the aim of attracting people from all ages, which forced Ricardo the put aside a couple of rather bloody pages despite his admiration for gore.
When it came to Phenomena, there were no such problems, with the nature of the book already covering for that. Covers for books one and two were selected alongside some of the spreads and splashes for maximum visual impact.
The crown jewel for me was this incredible cardboard cutout. When I saw it, I immediately asked Ricardo what were his plans for it once the deal is done. The exhibit might be moved to other places (nearby comic conventions asked for it), otherwise I’d gladly take the cutout with me.
The other two artists had similar displays and layouts to mine and it all looked pretty neat as one collection.
The Talk
There was also a talk with me and André Caetano, moderated by Rui Alves de Sousa. Rui is a radio host from Portuguese radio Antena 1, who created a show entirely about comics called Pranchas e Balões (rough translation would be Comic Boards and Balloons). Needless to say, he knows his comics and he’s highly experienced in these kind of talks, which helps making it all an entertaining hour for everyone.
The conversation was a lot of fun and touched all the usual topics about our career start and process, but we also covered lots of design, narrative and storytelling ideas, touching movies and other references. One of the most relevant topics was regarding the selection of the work for the exhibition, which Ricardo asked us to do. For me it was easy. Not only both Phenomena and Righteous Thirst are my most recent creations, hence being better technically, but are also the ones that represent me best since it’s all original material designed in its entirety by me. It doesn’t get more personal than that and being the exact kind of work I want to be doing, it’s also the one I want people to see first.
The exhibition is going to be available until the end of the month, if you are from around the area. Part I of the talk is available as a recording here, though I’m afraid it’s all in Portuguese (part II should be published this week).
It was truly a privilege to see my work in display like that and any chance to talk about comics to new audiences is very much welcomed. Ricardo deserves all the praise for his efforts to promote artists and art. In the end we stayed around to talk to some of the people who stayed for the talk and many of them were unaware of our work, so it’s very rewarding to feel that we made some new connections through what we create.
—
See you next week!
André
What a wonderful exhibition, Andre. Your drawings lose nothing (if anything, they are more impressive) in the larger format.