Visiting Artists: Kerascoet

Kerascoet board as drawn by Luke Howard

Kerascoet are a husband-and-wife artist team, Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset, from France. They are best known in the United States for their comics Beautiful Darkness (written by Fabien) and Beauty (written by Hubert).

Sebastian and Marie have to try to answer Luke Howard’s weird questions.

They work with a variety of writers, working in close collaboration. And collaboration is the name of the game for this pair. They are masters of working on a team, maintaining a balance between an exacting vision and compromise.

Sebastian discusses making comics

Together and separately, they work on comics, illustrations, and animation. Their strengths compliment each other. Sébastien is a trained architect with mastery of perspective and design. Marie brings life to her subjects and stories.

Sebastian made sure Marie spoke up, not allowing her to hide behind the books.

They admire each other’s strengths. And where their skills overlap, there is absolute respect that allows them to work in tandem. Any given page could be work on either or both of them. And yet the art remains cohesive and consistent because of the trust and care they put into it.

Marie has something important to tell Moss Bastille (’17)

With each comic, they also like to switch up their tools. Beautiful Darkness was created using pencil and watercolor. Miss Don’t Touch Me was originally drawn using a nib pen in a far looser style than Beauty. Another artist applied digital colors to their specifications.

After the talk, they were kind enough to sign books in the wonderful sketch tradition in Europe

Beauty was created using technical pens (in three sizes) and Uni Posca paint markers. The markers lay a flat, even layer of opaque color. The original use only two colors, black and the paint marker. The same colorist that worked on Miss Don’t Touch Me colored these pages, but with different specifications from Kerascoet. Instead of the dark monotone colors, they wanted more emotional vibrant colors.

Sandra Bartholomew (’17) took beautiful notes

Kerascoet has created many comics, large and small. But most are not available in the United States. If you speak French, though, you are in luck!

Marie and Sebastian

Photos courtesy Abe Olson.