The creators of Krüger & Krogh are currently releasing their second album; “Spøkelseståken” (The Ghost fog). And the reviews are great! While waiting for new drawings and prints for sale in our web shop, why not take a look at the ones from their last album?
Krüger & Krogh, the Norwegian comic book story, take place in Oslo, in the early sixties. Jacob Krüger and Otto Krogh are special agents in the (fictional) secret intelligence agency SIA (Section for Intermediary Affairs). The agency specializes in cases that appears to be inexplicable, unlikely or even supernatural.
The first book in the series took ten years to make. It was published in 2014, and was praised by both readers and critics. It was nominated for four national awards, and won two. Since then Krüger and Krogh enthusiasts have been waiting for album number two.
The Krüger & Krogh Comics are drawn much in the same fashion that comics once used to be made. The pages are hand drawn, using computers and advanced digital photo shopping only in the final process.
Bjarte Agdestein (picture) starts by hand sketching the pages by pencil, moving and removing elements by erasing, gluing new pieces of paper on top of badly or wrong drawn frames until he´s satisfied with the result. The artist doesn´t suffice with using only the pencil. Indian ink, charcoal, pall point pen, gouache or other materials are also used, to make the sketch as good as possible before starting on the black ink drawing that’s the final result before scanning it and colouring it in Photoshop.
If the artist has to make more than one sketch, he scans and prints the first one and starts the process all over again. This explains why there might be different versions of a sketched page, as one will notice from the BPO Page 28 1 and 2 versions (se our web shop).
When done sketching, the final result is scanned, modified into light blue in Photoshop, and printed on 75 gram Schoellershammer paper. The artist then uses the blueprint as background for the ink drawing, allowing new corrections.
The diligence and care that underlie such a slow process results in the highly vivid Krüger & Krogh line, much appreciated by the connoisseurs of the trade.
The hand made sketches and ink drawings for sale in Sunderø Art Gallery´s shop reflects the process described. Some of them have multiple layers of paper, others have blue print backgrounds, guide lines, or glue marks or tape attached. This gives you a unique opportunity to be the owner of a drawing witch both tells a part of a Krüger & Krogh comic story and an understanding of how it is drawn.
The Creators
The men behind Krüger & Krogh are Ronald Kabíček, Endre Skandfer and Bjarte Agdestein.
The three worked together as animators in the early 2000s. Since then they have been exploring different artistic directions, such as animation, special effects, directing, illustration, scriptwriting etc.
Krüger & Krogh is all about collaboration (and a lot of research), and all three take a part in the different stages of the creative process. Skandfer and Kabíček are mainly handling the script, dialogue, layout and coloring, while Agdestein is doing design and the final drawings.
