Adam Święcki

• born 1977
• born in Zambrów
• he lives and creates his works in Pruszcz Gdański
• he specializes in comics, illustrations and books for children

“Walk persistently, even backwards, if only in the right direction”.

In 2003, he graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Białystok University of Technology. He writes and illustrates books for children and rhyme comics for the youngest readers.

The most important publications: “Przebudzone legendy”, Act 1, 2, 3 (story and art), Studio Domino, 2003, 2008; “Przebudzone legendy. Oczy dla kruka” (story and art), Timof i Cisi Wspólnicy, 2013; “Gaia” (story and art), Timof i Cisi Wspólnicy, 2015; “Pani Detektyw Sowa” (story and art), Wydawnictwo Tadam, 2016; “Dziewanna, szczury i inne historie” (story and art), Timof i Cisi Wspólnicy, 2017; “Pan Elegant Lis” (story and art), Wydawnictwo Tadam, 2017; “Pan Łasuch Miś” (story and art), Wydawnictwo Tadam, 2017.

The most important awards and distinctions: distinction in the “Nowa Fantastyka” and British Council competition, 2005; the 1st place in the literary and art competition of frightening works “Danse Macabre”, 2008.

Adam Święcki creates his works using mainly digital tools, but he also uses traditional techniques, such as pencil, ink, fine felt-tip pen and felt-tip pen.
He composes his pages with architectonic flourish, playing with the sheet of paper; as a result, his albums include splash pages, i.e. whole-page panels. He often refrains from drawing speech balloons and puts the character’s words directly in a panel, drawing only a faint outline of the character. Thus, by crossing the borderlines between typographic elements, characters and the background, the artist transforms the whole image into a graphic work resembling a poster.
That effect is increased by strong contrasts, lots of black and illustrations devoid of many unnecessary elements. Sometimes, emotional images are accompanied with narrow quivering strokes which resemble sketching.
While working mainly with black and white, Święcki does not resign from the economical use of colour, emphasizing selected fragments of the image of the greatest expressive value. Sometimes, he decides to use pastels and then he creates panels with interpenetrating spots of colours with no clear contours.
Topics characteristic for the artist include widely-understood fantasy; he eagerly uses folklore and smuggles dreamlike elements into the convention of dark stories. On the other hand, his comics for children are created using a different style: whole-page panels are full of a limited number of contrasting and bold colours. Drawings are simplified and the background is reduced so as to make the visual message legible for the youngest readers.

Adam Święcki Gallery

More information about the artist: facebook.com/AdamSwieckiilustracje