Gwendal Le Bec captures the woes and worries of love in his witty series
Illustrator Gwendal Le Bec is known for his pithy observations and well-observed moments in his work. His series of illustrations for The Sunday Times’ Love Column are the epitome of his joyous, cartoonish style, as Gwendal depicts the woes and worries of modern relationships and love through visually engaging vignettes.
“For the Love Column a reader would have written a letter about some issue they were experiencing and Vanessa Marin, a therapist, would answer them,” explains Gwendal. Covering issues such as sexting, erection problems, trying for a baby and jealousy Gwendal’s lighthearted style captures both an awkwardness and humour.
Gwendal created spot illustrations for the column from February till July this year. “It’s a great thing for an illustrator to have a regular gig in a newspaper. Since it was an ongoing series week after week, I had to stay coherent in the tone, the humour and the style,” Gwendal says. “I have worked with The Sunday Times before and I had an idea of what they were expecting from me but I still had to make it work.”
One of the main challenges for Gwendal was trying to come up with ideas that “avoided representing sex itself”. The illustrator explains: “The newspaper has a very broad audience and unfortunately you can’t show everything. I would sometimes come up with kinky ideas just to make the art director laugh but I knew it wouldn’t go through.”
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Rebecca Fulleylove is a freelance writer and editor specialising in art, design and culture. She is also senior writer at Creative Review, having previously worked at Elephant, Google Arts & Culture, and It’s Nice That.