Rui Tenreiro on his crab-themed graphic novel

Rui Tenreiro is a triple threat: author, illustrator and art director, the Mozambique-born one-man creative powerhouse can these days be found in Stockholm, Sweden.

“You were early supporters of my work already in 2009 and 2010,” Rui recalls. “And I’ve always been grateful for that trust. I didn’t even work in full colour back then!” In the years since we first featured his work, Rui’s story-telling skills have developed in myriad ways. “One of the biggest changes in my work has been ​the transition to a more personal visual ​language​​,” he says. “And ​that I began writing better structured stories. I love story structure and this new book hopefully carries that through. I’ve also developed a particular way of composition which I can’t quite describe. I’ve also developed a particular way of composition which I could perhaps describe as symmetrical tableau.”

Rui’s latest story, which is now available in a Swedish edition takes the form of Lanterns of Nedzu, a 108-page long graphic novel (complete with its own musical score) which took Rui five years to make, two of which were spending drawing and colouring. “Told in flashback, it’s the story of a girl who’s trying to see a face pattern on an ancient, enormous crab shell, but she’s unable to,” Rui explains. “Her grandfather helps her seeing the pattern by telling her the story behind the shell​ – it ​belonged to a jealous​ and dangerous​ crab who killed a woman​,​ ​impersonating​ her for her lover​, who believe​d the crab​​, and ​with whom he begins a love affair – for starters!”

Inspiration for the off-kilter narrative came from two different stories that were merged into one. “One was an adaptation of a Japanese horror story called Botan Dōrō, in which a man and a dead woman become lovers but he couldn’t see she was dead. Another story was something I was writing called Spider Den, inspired by Kumo Gassen, a yearly spider fight in Kagoshima. But then I discovered the Heikegani crab, which has a face on their shell, said to contain the souls of dead samurai, and the giant Japanese spider crab (Google it!). All these elements and more came together in this story, complete with a soundtrack by Tiago Correia-Paulo.”

Rui’s illustrations for Lanterns of Nedzu were inspired by Asian cinema, particularly the works on Apichatpong Weerasethakul, ​​Ozu and ​Ghibli, “but I ​was also influenced ​by the Gekiga books that Drawn & Quarterly has been putting out.​ Gekiga authors wrote great, strange plots,” he says. Rui created them with an arsenal of Deleter metallic nibs “and sumi ink on thick watercolour paper”, colouring with careful combinations of pastels, watercolour and Photoshop/Wacom. “When I ​do personal stories for books or film, I go through several generations of writing and researching the world in which a story takes place, down to the detail,” Rui remarks of his process. “​The illustration is the tip of the iceberg.​ ​I enjoy working with a team – ​for ​​​Lanterns of Nedzu I worked with two main assistant colourists: Łukasz Mackiewicz and Disa Wallander, who created tons of masks and worked from a library of colours I created for each scene. I then did the final tone adjustments.​ I’m thankful to them forever.​“