Alas, here is my second entry as a comics certificate student. Or should I say, my last entry as a pre-comics certificate program student? The program starts next week, and I’m really excited about it! But, before I go into that, first and foremost, I would like to acknowledge Dylan Williams, one of the comic certificate program teachers, who passed away last weekend. I only had the opportunity to meet Dylan once, and that was actually when I came to the IPRC for the first time to check out the comics certificate program. Dylan was super friendly and helpful. He talked with me for a while about the program itself, gave me a few comic zines, and invited me to sit in on his class later that evening. I was really looking forward to working with him, and those who did have the opportunity to work with him were lucky indeed. RIP Dylan.
Tomorrow is the meet n’ greet with all of the certificate students (including the creative writing and poetry students) I’m pretty excited to meet everyone, and perhaps find some writers to do collaborative work with. On the note of combining writing and comics, here’s a great piece that comic artist Gabrielle Bell did recently where she turned a poem by Sasha Chorny into a comic. I aspire to do similar kinds of work in the next year.
So, comics work: the heat wave is gone, the sky is mostly overcast, therefore, I am a lot more motivated to be drawing and writing. The comics work I have done in the past week has been a mish-mash of sorts. I’m still in the process of getting settled at my place, and I recently started a job as a canvasser, so i’ve been getting lots of inspiration for future comics (expect some comics about canvassing in the near future!) Last week during my volunteer shift at the IPRC, I started a comic inspired by my nostalgia of when I was an exchange student in Sweden, and my desire to return and re-explore the place six years later. Here is what I have done of it so far:
Some of you may be wondering why the drawing is in blue. True story: comics are drawn twice. A lot of comic artists will first draw out their comics in blue pencil, and then ink over it. The reason for this is because when one scans their work onto a computer, the blue lines won’t show up when it is scanned in grayscale. Therefore, there are a lot less edits that have to be done on the work itself. Pretty cool, hey?
I’ll be back with more next week!
Until next time,
-Fiona