Les Jeanclode is a French art collective.

The artists from Les Jeanclode are some of the most talented illustrators from the new generation, and I had the chance to have a small chat with Sebastien, one of the founders of the inspiring crew.
More about French art collective Les Jeanclode.

PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF
My name is Sébastien, i’m working at “les jeanclode” with my two friends Mathieu and Nicolas. We’re working on it for almost 8 years now. We are illustrators, and the specifity of our way of making pictures is to work together on a same drawing. Each of us has his personal skill kind of, but the original aim was to mix our skill together to make an unique picture (between designs, colors, type…).

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK?
Our work is sometimes colorfull, sometimes only in black and white, sometimes in flat color sometimes with lines and effect. In a word, it’s impossible to speak about one style. Because of our way of working, we don’t want to stay in one style particularly. We just want to keep the same energy, the desire to make picture together and the most important : the pleausure we get working together. I think this pleasure is more emblematic than a speach on our style. You have to discover by yourself, and make your own idea of our universe 🙂

PLEASE SHARE WITH US YOUR WORKING PROCESS
Usually, and especially for some complicated pictures, we used to design and compose with adobe illustrator. It’s a good way for us to sketch, to try many different colors, composition. This soft is really handy, you can reduce or enlarge as you want, files are always very light.
Then sometimes from this illustrator file we switch on adobe photoshop, to get more textures, more effects, lighting etc.
We also use to work on many exhibitions for a while now (with a bigger crew called jeanspezial), and we would like to use our handmade skills to mix with computer graphics to get richer picture. We use to make some etchings, or linoleum. It’s another way to make picture in a different way than computer (even if it’s not that easy to use this kind of process for advertising).

HOW DOES YOUR ENVIRONMENT INFLUENCE YOUR ART?
Our environment influences our art definitly, influences our life so naturally our way to make picture. We are all living in paris right now, and it’s difficult to get some large space to work, so if we want to paint something big, we have to go down the streets on a wall. There is no other choice. So sometimes it’s fun sometimes boring because you can’t keep your work with you. But it’s also a way to be more spontanious, more free in your way of painting. Our current environment is propicious to meet a lot of different people. Gallerist, art director, a lot of different creative people. It’s a good way to work on a lot of different project, that’s what we are always looking for, have fun on a lot of different things.

WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES?
We have a lot of influences of course, each of us, and we’re three people. So I let you guess the mess ! More seriously, we have all different influences, but we try to mix our wishes all together and get something new.
To give you some famous name, I’m personnaly a huge fan of Jeremyville stuff, definitly one of my current god haha, but we are also fond of Blexbolex for example, or Mark Ryden. A lot of different influences as you can see.
We use to watch a lot of different things, it’s really important for us to be always in movement, we’re trying to do something new as often as possible.
We don’t want to have a sticker on us with one style for life. No way.
We are making pictures together, with fun and happyness, that’s it.