I have had a piece by Schiuten on my short list for a long time. It is not easy to find his art and the pieces do not come cheaply. I stumbled upon this page and although it lacks some of the architectural elements I hoped for in Schuiten, it more than made up for it in the figuritive work, lighting and detailed line work. The art is quite large, almost 18 x 24 but with such fine linework it looks dense even at that size. The themes of this piece is ugly with a thwarted rape scene but art, like life, isn't always pretty.
Francois Schuiten is one of those European artists that every fan of comics, comic art or illustration should know. He is among the most talented, influential and creative artists to work in comics during its long history. He brings an architectural background to his illustrations and a very fine line that is layered with a cross hatching style that he uses to produce interesting lighting and effects. In the European comic art world he is among the elite and in the class of Moebius, Manara and Bilal. His work is rarely available, revered and sought after. In the European and Japanese markets his works have been in continuous reprints for decades so many know his work but this is not so in North America. He did work in English for Heavy Metal Magazine in the 80's and had some his book published in the 80's by NBM but they are long out of print and impossible to find. So, unfortunately his books are not easy to find for the English speaking world. Thankfully, a friend of mine, Steve Smith is trying to change all that. He recently produced a truly beautiful volume of the Leaning Girl though Kickstarter. This book is a piece of art in itself. If interested I'd suggest checking it out and getting a copy at your local book store (available in previews in July I believe), available now on Amazon or through Steve directly.
See additional images from some panel details and photo of what the pencil/layout art to this page looked like. This image is a photograph of page from a book where all the pencil pieces for this book were collected. It is a pretty rare book and so I was lucky that Steve had a copy of this in his library and allowed me to take this picture. The final images are different than this piece but you can certainly see how it was created and evolved.
