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| Rosinski in the eighties |
Rosinski (°1941) started als a professional illustrator in Poland at the time of the cold war, begin seventies.
He made some Polish comics, illustrations for school- and children's books but his big succes started in 1977 when he was asked to draw the Viking/SF-saga Thorgal, written by Jean Van Hamme. That comic was published in the Belgian comics magazine "Tintin", which had at that time a French and a Dutch version.
This series was a huge succes, not only by the artwork of Rosinski but also because of the stories itself, which attracted a huge female audience as well... The story themas vary from Norse mythology to pure fantasy and a mix of romance, drama, horror,...
I saw Rosinski's work for the first time in "Kuifje", which is the Dutch-language version of the Tintin-magazine. The 5th album "De schaduwen voorbij" (Au-delà des ombres) appeared somewhere begin 1980's, and as a 8 or 9 years old boy, who was only familiar with classic Belgian comics like Tintin, Suske en Wiske, the Smurfs, etc, this story opened a whole new (graphical) world to me...
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| The opening page of "Au-delà des ombres" (Thorgal #5) |
Rosinski sent his work from the other side of the iron wall to Brussels, where Tintin-magazine was published.
Difficulties in 1980 in Poland (the Solidarnosc-era) made it difficult to sent his original work to the Tintin-editor, so he migrated to Belgium (his family followed later on). He got the Belgian nationality at that time and in our country, he made some of his finest work (who wouldn't ;-) ) but later on he was lured to Switserland by some of his admirers there... Nevertheless he kept his double nationality (Polish-Belgian) and didn't become a Swiss citizen.
So Thorgal is his most famous series.
In this series he evolved from classic black and white inking to a more cross-hatched style.
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| Classic style |
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| Evolving from classic to more cross-hatching |
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| Cross-hatching (original from the Qâ-story arc) |
New Thorgal albums followed every year, but in the eighties he worked also on a pure SF-series with A.P. Duchâteau: Hans. From the fifth album on, another Polish illustrator Kas helped him and eventually took over the series from part 6 on...
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| Opening scene from the first album |
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| Cover for "The Gladiators" |
Thorgal is Rosinski's most-known series, but the "Chninkel"-one-shot (also in collaboration with Van Hamme, published in the end of the eighties) is considered as his masterpiece. It appears high in most rankings, with it's unique "Messiah-story-in-a-fantasy setting".
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| Cover |
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| Nice black-and-white artwork |
This albums originally appeared in black and white (166 pages) and consists of different chapters, which were pre-published in the "A suivre"-comics magazine.
There is also a more recent color version, but if you get the chance, buy the black-and-white version, because that's how it was meant to be. (The publisher's marketing department will say you definitely should buy both ;-) ).
In the nineties Rosinski made another 4-part fantasy-story "Laments of the Lost Moors / Complaintes des Landes Perdues (Fr.) / Klaagzang van de verloren gewesten (Dutch)", this time with writer Jean Dufaux (another Belgian big-shot comic writer).
Put the covers two by two aside and you get a bigger image.
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| Laments of the lost moors/Complainte des Landes Perdues / Klaagzang van de Verloren Gewesten |
Articles about these two talents are coming up on this blog :-).
After his wife died, Rosinski lost his motivation to make new work. But he found a new drive leaving his inking technique for what it was, turning to direct colouring, with the interesting one-shots such as the Count of Skarbek (about the art-scène in the 19th century, script by Yves Sente) and Western (mostly coloured in sepia, script by Van Hamme).
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| Western (with Van Hamme) |
Afterwards, he was motivated again to make new Thorgals, but this time also in direct color...
So Rosinski found a new drive, but writer Van Hamme was finished with Thorgal and Yves Sente, who wrote the Skarbel-story, became the new writer.
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| Thorgal in direct colour (acryl, water color, ...) |
In general, Rosinsky paints every picture on the scale he likes, and afterwards they're digitally combined into one picture. This allows him to work at the scale he liks for each picture. For "Skarbek" for example, his originals were up to 1 meter (40 inch) in height...
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| Original art for Thorgal covers (which are published at +/- A4-format, the originals are about 40inch/100cm in height). |
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| Rosinski monograph |
Artbook
In 2013 a monography about Rosinski appeared. Its scale (400 pages, 29.50 cm x 29.50 cm x 9.50 cm - approx. 11x11x3.5 inch) makes it difficult to fit in regular book shelves (or at least in mine), but it isn't that very expensive (+/- 50 euro, because it was printed and sold in high volumes) and provides a wonderfull overview of his work. It also includes interviews with the writers he collaborated with and other stuff. But even if you don't speak French (or Dutch, if you can get a copy of that version), the book is still interesting enough :-). The book itself was layouted by his son Pjotr (certainly a talent for graphic design).As Rosinski grows older (like anyone :-) ) and the time between new albums became longer and longer, three spin-offs were created: Kriss of Valnor (Thorgal's sexy but evil adversary) , Louve (about his younger daughter that can speak with animals), and "The youth of Thorgal", all drawn by other authors.
Confusing
A little remark aside: for anyone who also knows the Jugurtha-series by Franz: both Thorgal and Jugurtha were published in Kuifje at the same time, which confused me as a child. For some years (until I could read), I thought that Jugurtha and Thorgal were actually one and the same person... |
| Jugurtha by Franz |
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| Thorgal by Rosinski |
Reading list:
The best Thorgal story (in my humble opinion) is "Wolvin" #16, from the regular series, not the spin-off). You can read it without being familiar with the rest of the stories, as it is a single story in the Thorgal saga.If you don't understand English, French,Dutch, Polish or any other of the translated langues: try Alinoë (#6), a story with almoast no text.
Chinkel is a must-have for any comic-fan. No discussion about that.
Read extracts online
On the publisher's website (Le Lombard) you can read extracts from any album by clicking the "Lire un extrait"-button. This link brings you to Thorgal #1. Click "La série- les suivants" to move to the next Thorgal comics.Links:
- http://www.thorgal.com (French language)
- Thorgal on wikipedia (English)
- Interview with Rosinski on drawing, creativity, ... (PDF-Dutch language) Google Chrome allows you to auto-translate this (via Preferences>Advanced) to your own language. You'll get an "Translate this?"-option in the upper-right corner.
- Interview with Rosinski and Sente about their collaboration (PDF-Dutch language) Google Chrome for translation
Belgian original publisher
Thorgal also exist in other languages... I didn't find a complete list, so you'll have to google for your own language...
Click here to see the other comic artist that I admire.
