Leonard Ermel, an illustrator from Berlin, moved to Brussels – Europe’s secret comic book capital – for six months. In sketching for his digital diary, he found a means of countering feelings of being a stranger.
For some, Brussels is Europe’s comic book capital: In Brussels, for instance, you can find the Belgian Comic Strip Center, located in a former art nouveau department store for more than 30 years. The Center has a permanent exhibition on the history of comics in addition to several temporary exhibitions. In many places in the city, large paintings on building facades that stretch along the Comic Book Route pay homage to the comic.
Brussels also has several art schools that have courses dedicated to bandesdessinées or beeldverhaal – ‘comic’ in French and Dutch respectively, the two languages spoken in bilingual Brussels. The Ecole supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc is one example. This is where Leonard Ermel went in 2014 to attend a six-month Erasmus programme. At the time he was studying visual communication at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. “I had an urge to devote more time to the comic book,” he says in retrospect. He was also excited by the opportunity to brush up his school-level French in Brussels, which is largely French-speaking.
Digital diary sketches
“Before going to Brussels, my idea was to capture my experiences of the place,” says Ermel. And so he came upon the Goethe-Institut’s Comic Transfer project. The sketches for his digital diary were published on the blog.
The first page, for instance, shows the narrow façade of an old building in warm colours ranging from ochre to green and yellow, with the garbage bags that are so typical of Brussels in front on the pavement. The artist from Berlin lives in one of these houses, together with several Erasmus students from France. He thus has no choice but to “immerse himself in the language” and the immersion is also put down on paper. Using black fineliners and water colours, Ermel draws himself sitting at a table, a plate of fries (what else?!) in front of him, surrounded by five women and a man talking animatedly with one another in speech bubbles that overlap. The thick, black letters are partly illegible with only some individual French words being recognisable. Initially, the non-native speaker only catches fragments of fast-paced conversations.
Countering the feeling of being a stranger
When taking a walk in a park in multi-lingual Brussels, Leonard Ermel notices that even the birds speak a foreign language. “Such loud, insistent chirping,” in large black letters, often between the bare branches of the trees.
The illustrator has found a means to help him counter the feeling of being a stranger: namely, to use paper and pencil to familiarize himself with his surroundings. And so he documents his first visit to the laundromat, as also the drawing excursion with the school to the gigantomania of the Palace of Justice in Brussels. On his many walks he learns to appreciate the new environment. “As a city, I found Brussels super.” The course at ESA Saint-Luc was not quite his taste, too regimented and little choice. “It did not take me long to realise that it wasn’t free enough for me.”
Drawing among the mob of jubilant fans
But with the onset of spring, the colours on the pages of the comic transfer diary are lighter and more varied. And then, in the finale on the last page, the drawings suddenly appear to be jotted down in a hurry, broad, rough strokes, and now only in three colours. “After watching the Red Devils, Belgian’s national team, win 1:0 against Russia in the Roi Baudouin Stadium, in searing heat on a screen that was far too small, I ended up in the midst of jubilant fans at the Grand Place.
With a Leffe beer in one hand and a black, yellow and red pencil in the other, I started to draw,” adds Ermel in a note. On the page, he sits cross-legged on the cobblestones in the square, wearing a red fan jersey, shadowy black figures start gathering around him and eventually he is almost completely obscured. “Draw us!” they demand in French. “But I’m not that fat,” complains one of them. Whether he draws like this, thanks to the alcohol, asks another. “That was a good opportunity to simply come more into contact with people,” recalls Leonard Ermel. “And it was a whole lot of fun.”
Drawing to break the ice and to feel you have arrived – that seems to work after all. And even if travel is not easy at the moment, on his next trip, he will definitely be packing a sketchbook and pencils. “Actually I always try to motivate myself to draw a lot when travelling.”
