Francois Schuiten: Belgian comic book architect

About one week – that's the time Belgian comic book artist Francois Schuiten used for drawing one page of his book "La Théorie du Grain de Sable" (2009). Precious time he took because, as he said, he is sure it flows into the pages and reflects from them later on. You can't help but agree with this theory when looking at his work. Born April 26, 1956 in Brussels he is most famous for his series "Les Cités Obscures" ("Cities of the Fantastic") which he created in 1983 with writer Benoit Peeters. Born into a family of architects – his parents and one of his brothers followed this profession – his drawings show a great concern for architectural compositions and detail. I rarely use the word "wow" when opening a comic book, but with Schuiten I did. He studied at Saint-Luc Institute in Brussels 1975–1977 and soon got into first contact with comics. His first work was printed in Pilote in May 1973. A few years later he moved on to Métal Hurlant which offered more artistic freedom. His art clearly shows his love for architecture which he explored further with his weekly series "The Gates of the Possible" (2005) created for the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. He also worked with Benoît Sokal and Martin Villeneuve to produce the script for the film "Aquarica" and is frequently wanted for other projects: he designed metro stations of "Porte de Hal" in Brussels and "Arts et Métiers" in Paris. Numerous European awards show that he has been noticed quite a bit - among others he received the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême in 2002. His latest work "La Douce" was released in Summer 2012 by Casterman.