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Marc Bauloye in ReB no. 8 1994:

LOUSTAL, le peintre de la BD / 

Portrait of author

LOUSTAL, the painter of the comics

Born April 10, 1956 to Neuilly-On-Seine, Jacques of Loustal, who signs Loustal, has the shy and reserved air. It is that it is first necessary to put it in confidence to get his confidences. To 35 years, he is married and has two little girls (one year and five years). Parisian, he is not a musician, although he adores the rock and regret not to know how to play the piano and the guitar. All small already, he drew in the margins of his notebooks.

But his parents had other ambitions for him and he became architect, what fascinated it a long time, after eight long years of study. He had a beautiful career therefore before him, more socially acceptable to a certain time that the comics

A drawer

accomplished

Currently, he makes the comics. He draws some advertisements, of the press illustrations and he paints more than ever with talent. When one likes the painting, one likes the drawings of Loustal. For his album: "The brothers Adamov", he worked the expression of the faces with the help of a flexible feature and stylized. He also used a setting in particular colors for urban and nocturnal ambiances, whereas he preferred the bathing architectures in the beginning with palms as in "Zenata Beach", together of watercolorses achieved during his stay in Morocco.

He already has behind him a number impressive of albums. With Philippe Paringaux, he already committed "Cœurs of sand", "Barney and the blue note", "The color of the dreams" and "A romantic boy." He collaborated with the American Jérôme Charyn for "The brothers Adamov." Charyn is novelist and literature professor in the university of Princeton to the United States.

A homage has Hergé

He recognizes in his "painting" influences it strong enough of Hergé... "Even though it doesn't appear to a non aware œil, explain Loustal, I underwent the in fluence of Hergé, because I had been impregnated some so when I was small. He remained something of it... To one moment, I wanted to make a more classic Comic strip, with an adventurer (as Tintin) that by court the globe and the times. For me, it was a little like a sort of homage in Hergé ("Memorial with da my")." "Cœurs of sand" drags the reader in Africa, at the time of years 30. It is the history of a friendship between two women. The hot colors, the delicate nuances of watercolorses used by Loustal suggest the odors of the desert, his big extents emptiness and the soft melancholy of the characters remarkably. "For the color, what was important for me, pursues Loustal, it is a stay of two years in Morocco as architect. One is sensitive to the color, to him' country, to light... It is just after I made "Cœur of Sand"." "A romantic boy' enrolls in the continuity of this album. "To my beginnings, I had chosen the studies of architecture, continue Loustal, to make the drawing. These are the studies opening on a good general formation. After, I rowed not so (2 years) because, beginning 80, there was a big possibility to make itself/themselves publish quickly."

A text placed below the drawing

"A romantic boy" tells a history of love with one TO as in aristocracy and attention not key. It is upside-down Cinderella with an idealistic boy. The script writer's narration, Paringaux, reads herself/itself like a novel, especially as it exploits a shift wanted with the picture. "What I like well in work with Paringaux, pursues Loustal, it is a rare enough complicity. One speaks the same language, one doesn't have need to explain itself/themselves. I have a lot of liberties to put in stage his histories. I consider myself more as a manufacturer of pictures that a raconteur of histories." Parailleurs, according to a tried technique, Loustal doesn't use the system of the bubbles, simple the one of the text placed below the drawing.

"Me, he pursues, I show things in the drawing that are not in the text and the text shows the things that I cannot explain by the drawing." "The color of the dreams", these are works of illustrations of all kinds. "It is the result of painter's work, of illustrator that I make since 5 years, says Loustal. It is therefore indeed a ' stage in my career." Among his projects: a book for children and a work for the Japanese: a history with a woman who will browse the world in search of the traces of his extinct lover. A colorful, dense, naive painting, with ambiances 'Jazzes" and the artistically bare women, there is what characterizes Loustal...

© Copyright: Marc Bauloye ReB in (Dream in Bubbles: the comics in movement) no. 8, June 1994,