Brecht Evens


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Saturday, November 20, 2010


When I was in Angoulême last year, the best looking book I found at the festival was Brecht Evens’ The Wrong Place. It was in French, but that was okay; it was just so beautiful, I didn’t care that I couldn’t fully understand the story. I read it backwards and somehow I got it. I think. Something about friendship. Painted in watercolor, this book really grabbed my attention. It was soft, but very powerful. Charming, but without too much fancy. Very direct drawing, painting, and proportions. Very skilled.

So, it was with great pleasure I read the new translation of the book in English and loved it. I was hoping the story would match the execution of the art.

Thankfully, there is a match. Art and story content are both on equal footing.

The story concerns a group of friends and their attachments to each other. Specifically everyone’s attachment to Robbie – who seems to be a heroic dancing fool who can charm the pants off anyone. There’s a party at a boring apartment owned by Gary, the boring party host. Everyone, including lots of cute girls, wanna know where Robbie is. So after sitting around we switch scenes to the Disco Harem where Robbie hangs out. Robbie is indeed there and the story takes off.

Robbie is definitely a charming fool and we are treated to a visual showcase of exquisite skill when the author Evens lets us see Robbie at work. He picks up a girl in the disco and takes her on a carriage ride with musicians and then off to bed where Robbie gets back in the saddle with the girl. The author mixes tight sequencing with panoramic views and fleshy close-ups – all in gorgeous watercolor. Quite a sight to behold. Evens is really good. And so is the story.

There are different POV’s and stories within stories – but essentially it’s about the contrast between Robbie and Gary. The way the different POV’s are introduced and weaved into the story is interesting. One of the POV’s is female – and she, of course, is the girl Robbie picks up at the disco. It’s an interesting narrative device that provides a wider, clearer picture of the story and the contrast between the male leads.

It’s a very European story, and I mean that with respect. It’s less a story about an individual and more about a group. There’s something mythic too at work here. Robbie feels like the god Pan. And Gary is the poor human who pouts while watching all the pretty nymphs fool around with satyrs. Maybe that’s a stretch, but that’s the feeling I got. There’s something archetypal to the story that I really like. It’s about adulthood and play and responsibility and creative thought. Myth.

Anyways, check this one out, I bet it would make a nice Christmas present. To yourself, of course. Meanwhile check out this interview that I did with Brecht Evens this past week.

Brecht Evens interview – images in gallery below – scroll down

1. Would you describe your working method a little bit? Are you composing directly with watercolor? Do you make preliminary studies for the pages? The pages seem very controlled and emotive at once.

Brecht: I make a small linear thumbnail sketch before drawing, to see where to put the most important elements. Then I take a relatively wide brush, and repeat this sketch in big strokes on a big sheet of Steinbach paper. Now it’s a very crude drawing, but light in tone (I mostly use ecoline, a transparent color ink). Then come many subsequent phases of detailing, starting with the space and the light. Every new layer is darker or more opaque than the one below. When drawing an interior, especially dark interiors, I will leave the light sources either white or a very light hue. A lot of the shapes and figures are drawn this way, by darkening the background around them.

I spend much more time staring at the drawing than drawing, to spot possibilities hiding in the unfinished image. Rough shapes are combined with fine detail. I avoid coloring in a line drawing, or drawing a contour around a shape that is already there. Ecoline’s transparency allows for many things to stay visible even though they’re in the background; A handsomely patterned floor will still be visible in the finished drawing even though the room is bustling with people. ‘A man with a hat’ will be drawn as a hat with not much below it, ‘a women in boots and heavy makeup’ will have those two things shown in detail, and the rest of her body only suggested. Especially when drawing people I avoid realistic shadows and highlights, unless it’s relevant: for example, an african face is defined by its bone-structure, the nose, cheekbones.

This approach felt like a leap from my earlier work. When I look at the drawings, the fun I had making them is still very palpable, and I like how it contrasts with the bitterness and awkwardness in how the characters interact most of the time.

You could say there’s three phases in developing a drawing style. You start with experiment: The purplish traffic scene just after the prologue was the first drawing deemed usable, and it felt entirely new while I was making it. Then comes method; consolidating your trouvailles and applying them for a reason. They become part of a toolbox. Then there seems to be a more joyless phase of applying all these things because they have become a second nature, trademarks – a style. Style seems to be made up of all the things you repeat without thinking. My illustration work suffers more from this than my comic-book-work. I’m making a new comic book, so I try to avoid this reflex.

2. Composing color. I like how you assign colors to characters and to their dialogue. Would you talk about that a bit?

Brecht: This is a code, which makes it possible to do more of the above. A character can become a graphically unobtrusive splotch of color and still be recognizable. You can even not draw a character and have the color of the text still make it clear who’s talking.

3. I also notice you don’t use word balloons. I think this takes away the problem of the balloons obscuring the art or creating floating shapes in the artwork. Have you always worked that way with dialogue? I think it works very well. Although there are times when it is confusing as to who is speaking.

Brecht: I’ve started doing it for this book. It does become confusing, when you have many people speaking and the reader starts having to distinguish between red and oxblood. The book requires a powerful night-light.

4. How did you structure this story? It feels organic as though you made it up as you went along. But it seems to also be divided into halves. There is the scene at the house and the scene at the club essentially. Does the structure tie in with the duality of the main characters at all? To me, there was a rhyme there between the two places, the two friends and the two halves of the book.

Brecht: The book is not driven by a plot. It mostly shows off the characters’ behavior in different escalating scenarios. I didn’t work with a detailed storyboard for this book. The nice thing about that is that most scenes were freshly written out when drawn, and thus vivid in the mind. But it might also be the biggest weakness of the book. I do use a storyboard for my next book, which makes me compose more tightly and avoid repetition. It has one tension arc whipped along by little scenes, while in The Wrong Place the chapters are like short stories – long scenes with their own internal story arc.

The first chapter of the book is static: It takes place in Gary’s living room, his world, where the chairs, party snacks and wine-glasses are neatly arranged. The second and third chapter (I think that’s your second half) take place in Robbie’s world, an outsized night club where he twice takes someone on a joyride ending in separation and anticlimax. This allowed for a lot of play with the changing decors, the infinite spaces of the night club.

5. How did you go about editing? It seems with painted comics such as yours there must be some difficulties when editing because of the sheer work involved.

Brecht: Yeah – you want to do your editing beforehand!

6. I really enjoyed the way you would transition from grid page designs to organic double page spread designs. The sense of place and movement; the movement of the characters was blended nicely and didn’t feel “regimented” or claustrophobic. Would you talk about the way you like to design pages in regards to the story?

Brecht: A grid page allows for rhythm, for a precise timing of the characters little movements and utterances. A big spread emphasizes the setting, the flow of characters moving about in it, the bigger experience.

I make square, filled images when the atmosphere and light is important, and when it’s about how a character moves I like to have it clearly silhouetted against the white of the page.

7. And lastly would you talk about the characters? I think there is a mythic feeling to the story. Robbie is sort of Pan, satyr-like figure, no? One who inspires revelry and beauty and his counterpoint is, of course, Gary. Would you talk about the way you adapted this type of story to a modern stage?

Brecht: Mythical and fairy tale-ish resonances do creep in. One reason is that Disco Harem looks like an Ottoman palace, and the people in it are dressed in a retro style inspired by the Flemish nightlife (I was living in Ghent) where you’ll see a lot of high heels, vintage dresses and nonchalantly worn costume jackets. My then-girlfriend dreamed up a lot of the outfits, so the book shows of her vintage taste.

Another reason is that Robbie is introduced as some sort of party hero, clad in myth, also for the reader who first meets him through stories other people tell about him, and never gets to watch him when he’s alone. This creates a distance, an unattainability, and it’s a vicious cycle: these stories make people project that mythical figure on him, it changes their behavior when they meet him, which makes it easy, and imperative, for him to take on that role. The same goes for Gary, who has a sad scenario written out for him by other people. The characters’ identity is mostly made up of other people’s quick decisions.

This is the subject of the book, which is a bit deterministic in that it has people wrestling to climb some social ladder, only to slide back down (or halfway down) to their assigned place on it, the wrong place.

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13 Responses to “Brecht Evens”
  1. cool! says:

    I really like this cover. It’s like, are any of these individuals in particular in the wrong place or are they all at once mistakenly placed? Or, is it all just a misconception and they are all exactly where they belong, moving up the stairs, not sure of the destination but hopefully, enjoying the ride.

  2. zack soto says:

    HOLY SHIT! Yeah, I need this in my life.

  3. great interview. i really love this book – the rhythm and body language in the first third of the story are so on point

  4. Brian Nicholson says:

    One thing I would like to know: How did this dude come to attention in Europe? He is, I believe, in his mid-twenties; but his work couldn’t be reproduced cheaply in zines due to its use of colors. I don’t even know if zines are a thing in Europe. Obviously, his chops are high enough to receive recognition by showing originals, but I’m not sure how that would happen.

    It seems like the obvious answer would be “the internet,” but- obviously most things, either in zines or on the internet, come from a larger community of shared influences, and I can’t really think of anyone doing work like this.

    (And for those that don’t know, Brecht has a silent comic-book format one-shot being put out by Top Shelf in March 2011.)

  5. […] Thankfully, there is a match. Art and story content are both on equal footing. mehr […]

  6. Dave O. says:

    I picked this up at D&Q’s table at the Boston Book Fair this year. I absolutely love this book.

  7. Tom Devlin says:

    I can’t say how it came to attention in Europe but I can say it came to my attention by a blind submission email. As I recall, he sent about half of the book (many pages in various states of completion) and no English translation. Although he sent a translation a few weeks later at my request.

  8. […] Comics Comics, an interview with a French cartoonist named Brecht Evans. I’m linking to this interview because it contains a sentence I think I ought to keep in […]

  9. Sean says:

    yeah, it was originally published by a small Belgian publisher with Brecht Evens getting a grant from the Flemish Fund for Literature in order to produce it. Many of the Belgian/Flemish indie comics are produced via a support grant from the government, something that has led to a lot of complaints from the more mainstream comic book creators.

  10. Ellen says:

    @sean The Belgian comic artists that get a grant are not always indie, nor are the ones that don’t support this system always mainstream.
    You just have people that are better at filling in forms for money, finding out how to get these subsidies or just socializing with the right people that can get them ahead and others are less practical and just want to draw or are too proud and work second jobs.
    Getting or not getting a grant doesn’t really say anything about the quality of your work.

    I work as an illustrator in Belgium, and I have heard a lot of complaints of this same system with children book illustrators (I do mostly editorial so I haven’t really had any problems with it). You have some illustrators that get these grants and because they already have enough money with their subsidies, they don’t really have to make that much on their books anymore.
    So because of them prices keep decreasing also for illustrators without grants. It ruins the market.
    Another problem with these grants is that some publishers in belgium only want autors with grants, because they also get subsidies for publishing their books.
    So people that for example make enough money as illustrators (and therefore don’t bother to ask for a grant) and work on a comic book in their spare time, risk not to get published because of this stupid system. Although they’re probably better then half of the subsidized artists.
    And they also get a ridiculous amount of promotion by the fund that hands out the grants.
    That’s why some people complain.

  11. […] 7) The Wrong Place by Brecht Evens (D&Q) – First read through you can get distracted by how beautiful this book is. Damn. Evens watercolor images are vibrant, multilayered, and really dense. He makes great use of color for narrative affect. The most obvious example is using different color text for different characters speech, but at a later point in the story he drains all color from a two page spread leaving behind a scene that is an added punch of emotion due to its greyness. On second reading the subtlety of the story comes through and you really start to appreciate this rather simple story about two very different friends. Also, as I’ve seen others notice, one of the best (at times cubistic and almost abstract) sex scenes seen in comics. This book hasn’t gotten much attention, but here are two pieces worth reading: Robert Boyd on The Wrong Place and Frank Santoro on The Wrong Place (and an interview with the artist). […]

  12. […] lazy! I suppose what I’m saying has to do with one of the things you told Frank Santoro in your interview at Comics Comics — when you’re drawing a woman wearing fancy boots and a hat, you emphasize the boots […]

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