Its been a busy couple of weeks for me... We had our year end art show and party, the students worked tirelessly to get their final assignments done! I put the sketch books on the table and some more random pages on the left wall, the final assignment on the far wall and a few samples of comic pages from Ken's class, each one of those pages represented an eight page comic. We didn't have room to put them all up, which would have been spectacular. I'm so excited to see all the students amazing work year after year and I'm so pleased to be teaching our fourth year in the Comics and Graphic novel program!!!  

Ken being a Ham!

One student crashed after staying up all night finishing his assignment.

Me being a turkey and the cat being a cat!
Merry Christmas!!!

Here's one of my penciled pages of my third chapter. This stage of the comic page takes the longest, finding reference and just figuring out the page layout and the mechanics of drawing. I don't like to rely to heavily on reference and when I can't find any, I have to construct the figure. This is where structural drawing comes in handy, that's what I teach in class because finding reference is so time consuming.   

I then inked the page with a static line pen, never could get the hang of a brush. This stage is fun because all the hard work is done!

This stage is even more enjoyable. I use black watercolour and mix up light, medium and dark diluted pots of paint.  

This page is of me trying to overcome my fear of heights, a metaphor...

Hello!

I know it's been a long time since I've posted and I do apologize. I'm starting the third chapter of my book and will be posting some random semi finished pages on my blog, so you can see the process. The finished pages with dialog will be starting the 1st of Jan.  I've also been busy with Camosun College and I'm really enjoying a new crop of students. I can't believe this is the 4th year Ken and I've been teaching. Every year I do this, I pinch myself for having the opportunity to share what I know and in turn, what the students have taught me. It's on the job training... We've had some interesting models in my class, but the most interesting was last week.

I asked my model to bring in her hairless cat!!!  

Hello!

I'll be in Vancouver tomorrow for this festival, so drop by if you're planing on being at this event!!! I'll be there to say...hello!
:^) Joan

http://wordvancouver.ca/2015-festival/schedule/

 This is an amazing comics (Bande Dessinee) museum in Belgium we went to. To bad I couldn't get the blue truck to move out of the way of all the comics in the window. Nice to see a culture that is so supportive of popular culture! 

There was a library in the building, mostly full of comic albums, that's what they call them in Europe. The covers are hard bound and very uniform in size. 

Herge, the creator of Tintin is highly regarded as one of the greatest Belgian artist.

The whole museum had the process of how comics are made. Including the rough layouts and written script to the final artwork to published comic. It was all so wonderfully presented.

The historical context was so well done, with this physical prop out of the Little Nemo comic strip...a full size bed!

Of all the comic stores we went to in Europe...this one in Brussels stands out the most. 

The walls were covered salon style.

It was great to see these four prints prominently displayed. We have many prints of Francois Schuiten prints in our home. Ken and I love his work...and we got to meet him!! 

I really liked this comic strip, because of its simplicity.  After being overwhelmed with all the amazing artwork we saw, sometimes I needed to see something like this.

And of course the funny ones!

This comic store was the best!

We went to visit Ken's friend out in the country while we were in France. He showed us his alien fabricates  he makes for  fun.

The town had these strange trees that lined some of the streets.

The small town was quaint but really tiny, more like a Hamlet. It was a nice change from the bustling streets of Paris.

A typical country house in France.

Hi everyone, or anyone who's still looking at my blog, I've been a little neglect in posting regularly, so sorry. I got back from Ontario almost two weeks ago, Ken was back in late May... Including our trip to Europe I have been traveling for over three months! I had a lot of catching up to do when I got home. It's good to be back in my own studio. Ken greeted me at the airport with a red rose ;^) The art work below was a gift to Ken for our anniversary of being together forty years!!!! I got this art work in Hamilton, our friend Jaleen Groves had a show at an art gallery on James st. north. I liked this piece because to me... it kind of represents our relationship, prickly at times but the heart is still together after all these years.
While I was away I worked on my third script for Borealice #3! It's still a draft at this point but hopefully by the end of the summer I'll be finished the layouts, so I'm ready to start the final artwork in the fall. I've decided to go with the DC method, which is writing a script before I do the artwork. That's how I did my first book, the second book was done the Marvel way and I've learned that the DC way works better for me. Ken tells me, he prefers the Marvel way because the artist has more control, where as the DC way gives more control to the writer. But seeing that I'm doing the writing and the artwork... I find I like to get all my thinking out first. This gives me the time I need to wrap my head around what I want to say.
Anyway, in the meen time... I'll continue to post some pictures of our Europe trip or whatever else strikes my fancy.

:^)

More cool stuff at the flea market in Paris!