Louis Joos is the master of moody jazz comics.
He was born in Auderghem (Belgium) in 1940 and is now a veteran comic artist who is perhaps not very well known to a large audience but most definitely has had his influence on a younger generation.
Although he did go to art school (The academy of fine arts in Brussels), he didn’t find what he was looking for there and only later managed to “find his groove” by cultivating an attraction towards different artistic fields: cinema, on one hand, but more importantly: jazz music!
About his time in school he said:
‘Drawing is asking yourself many questions. And at the ACA (= academy), I didn’t find any answer to it. Tapestry teachers would give us old-fashioned and desperate illustration lessons. So, I had the feeling that I was learning nothing on the technical point of view as well as on the human point of view. To me, drawing is not just a gesture but rather a mentality.’
To make a living he worked as an illustrator for educational books but his career really started when he sent his first comics to the French publishing house Futuropolis.
In some of his earlier work he tried using color…
Bit of course, he is best known for his rough and energetic black and white drawings…
Joos’ comics do not always have the most thrilling stories. They thrive on mood and atmosphere. Check out the drawings in this comic with music by John Coltrane…
Louis Joos has made a lot of illustrations for children’s books as well (he was recently nominated for the international Hans Christian Andersen award for this) but obviously, most of his output, besides comics, has been for Jazz related publications and his own free work: drawings, screen-prints, paintings and sketches…
More Louis Joos on www.louisjoos.com.
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