This is my last Angouleme 2012 post finishing a week after the festival closed. This is a Sketch of Chris Ware, from memory as he didn’t make it to the festival.
I also wrote a blog post for FP and it can be read here.
Time to be getting on with new stuff and preparations for TCAF.
After the Saturday events our happy group went for a meal and we were provided with brown paper place-mats. Naturally the pens and pencils came out and we personalised them. I was trying to describe to Sally anne what Charles Burns looked like as we failed to get into his talk. This was from memory as i saw him briefly stop by to talk to Chris and Tom at the Adhouse table.
We didn’t pay for the bill with our sketches, sadly.
This is a sketchbook drawing made while sitting in the Eddie Campbell interview hosted by Paul Gravett. I was paging a Dan Clowes page i had seen earlier in the comics museum. It’s not a great likeness and the text is no reflection on Pauls interview. It was more me wanting him to dig deep about Eddies self publishing and approach. The few times that this happened was fascinating and inspiring.
MORE!
As ever i’m eating breakfast and trying to get ready for work and ideas are forming in my old brain sac.
This morning i tweeted about how i’ve handed out a stack of comics and mailed out stuff over the last ten years and received very little response. It was a moment of needy weakness. This will happen again i’m sure as i slowly withdraw from the convention jamboree.
But i’ve been thinking, why do i do it? Why do hand comics to publishers, hand them to cartoonists i really admire.
What am i expecting?
Well the publishers the answer is obvious. So are the conclusions reached after ten years. Publishers are busy and if in this era of the comic book no-one replies, then it’s safe to say your work is not considered a commercial option.
Fine, move along keep making keep publishing enjoy what develops.
Handing comics to cartoonist you admire. I do this so much. Why? What do i expect? In the early days i hoped that my genius shined so bright that i would be taken onboard for an apprenticeship and the future would be a an oasis of creativity discovery.
Or some such bollocks.
Then it was a way of saying ‘I do this too, i am one of you’.
I still do this but it’s more of a way of describing my work, as in this is the type of comic i make.
Afterwards i feel awful, and think, ‘Why did i do that again?’.
It is Angouleme in a few weeks and i will be there with my friends. We have a table again.
This year is going to be different for me, i’m not handing stuff out and will enjoy the festival instead.
Afterwards i wont be sitting at my computer waiting for the mail.
