Piotr Kowalski

• born 1973
• born in Warsaw
• he lives and creates his works in Warsaw
• he specializes in comics and book cover illustrations

“Ever since I can remember, I have always wanted to be a comics artist”.

He graduated from the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1995. The first Pole to draw a comic about Hulk for Marvel and the only Polish artist who creates at the French and American markets at the same time. The author of art for one of the comics based on “The Dark Tower” series by Stephen King.

The most important publications: “Dracula L’Immortel” (art), story by M. Dufranne, Casterman, 2010‒2012; “Marvel Knights: Hulk” (art), story by J. Keatinge, Marvel, 2013; “Sex” (art), story by J. Casey, Image, 2013‒2018; “The Dark Tower: the Drawing of the Three” (art), story by P. David and R. Furth, Marvel, 2014‒2015; “The Steam Man” (art), story by M. A. Miller and J. R. Lansdale, Dark Horse, 2015; “Badlands” (art), story by E. Corbeyran, Le Soleil, 2015‒2018; “30 Days of Night” (art), story by S. Niles, IDW, 2018.

Piotr Kowalski is one of few artists who choose not to use a tablet and stay faithful to traditional techniques, such as pencil and ink.
He is one of only several Polish artists to work in the European and American market. Kowalski’s phenomenon consists in the fact that his comics, which are “a hybrid of the American and European style”, as he says himself, are so universal that they meet expectations of various readers. The artist takes what is the best from both sources: the background full of detail from the European comics and very dynamic pages full of action from the American style.
Readers will not find any surprising formal experiments in Kowalski’s works. The solutions used by him, such as panels with non-typical shapes, changes of viewpoint, changes of planes or multiple close-ups, make the action dynamic but fit into the convention.
What is the most important in Kowalski’s works and what makes him able both to work in a team of artists in a specific series (e.g. “Hulk” by Marvel) and to create original individual comics is his perfect and well-developed technique. His strokes are light and precise; his drawings are clean, devoid of strong contours and chiaroscuro constructed with strong spots. Kowalski’s characteristic realistic style makes him able to depict characters’ countenance faithfully; as a result, his silent panels express more emotions than drawings by many other artists, overloaded with words.

Piotr Kowalski Gallery

More information about the artist: piotrkowalski.artstation.com