France -part two-

After those first three weeks I was able to really get some work going.  I would wake up at 7:00am have a little breakfast and sit down and start drawing.  I'd put an audiobook on and go until lunchtime, then about another hour of work until I had to lie down for an hour (sometimes even just 15 minutes was enough).  I made a makeshift nap nest in the studio using cushions from the couch and a spare pillow.  I'd get up ready to go and sit back down to work until dinner time (my dinner time was about 5pm, dinner time in France is usually at 8pm or later).  Watch an episode of Mr. Show on my ipod and then work until about midnight.  I had this schedule going all the days I wasn't heading into Bordeaux to hang out with Guillaume or Laura and Romain.  Here are the daily progress pics of the first page I finished in residency-

 When I look back to this page I think my subconscious was being a little overly dramatic. One might think I felt a little isolated and surrounded by monsters.  I promise you that was just CPG.  Here you can see how I was able to get such depth with brush hatching. Just different passes over and over with different angled line work. I wanted to get the background tone done before I really went in and darkened the critters. So I knew how dark to make them. 

The next stop on the La Fille Maudite book tour was Toulouse.  I had a talk at a library and then a book signing at a local comic shop Terres de Legende.  They did a great display in the window that I forgot to take a picture of.  They asked for any damaged copies of the book and then took out pages and strung them up.  I had one of the best meals of the entire residency after the signing.  They took me to a little restaurant kind of like a pub and I had foi gras for the first time.  It was THE BEST!  And they loaded me up with a bunch of free books!  The most unfortunate part of doing a post like this so far after the fact is I've forgotten a lot of the names of the people who helped me out so much :( I'm very sorry about that. There was a lovely lady who picked me up from the train station and was pretty much my chaperone the 2 days I was in Toulouse.  And the guy who ran Terre de Legende really reminded me of Curtis from Vault of Midnight.  A guy you really wanted to hang out with and have a beer.  I was able to roam about before my library talk and took a couple of pictures-

 After the trip to Toulouse I was counting down the days until Emily arrived.  At this point I had been in France for about 7 weeks I think.  Emily was coming and she was staying with me for 2 whole weeks, I was really excited!  I couldn't wait to show her around.  I made a practice run to the airport in my car just to make sure I'd be able to get there on the day with no problems.  She landed in Paris and missed the flight to Bordeaux, which isn't that hard to do since there was less than an hour layover and Charles De Gaulle airport is frickin enormous.

 The next book store signing planned was in Paris.  Emily and I took the train to Paris where we met Laura and she helped us navigate the Paris underground and got us to where we needed to be the two days we had in Paris.  She was amazing, we really wanted to see a bunch of things and she didn't flinch.  She took us to see the Louvre (only from the outside, we didn't have time to go in), Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and Shakespeare and Co. (the bookstore they used in the Highlander series, hee hee hee).  Paris was the most confusing city we visited on our stay and we couldn't have done it without Laura.  Comic shop signings at Librairie Super Heros and the second day at BD Net. 

Then we took a train from Paris to Rouen.  I had a book store signing at Au Grand Nulle Part. The owner met us at the train station and not only took us out to an amazing lunch at a wonderful restaurant but then took us on a short walking tour of his city.  Rouen was the one place Emily and I agreed we could move to.  It's a little like Ann Arbor meets Diagon Alley.  Here are a couple of pictures from there-

After the signing in Rouen we took the train back to Paris and then a train back to Bordeaux.  It took me awhile to learn the pathways of Bordeaux to the places I liked most.  Of those there was Mollat -the largest non chain bookstore in all of France, if I'm not mistaken.  The art supply shop, the Bio c' Bon -the organic super market, and the only place I could find peanut butter (it wasn't that great), and the movie theatre.  Before Emily showed up Romain and I went to a couple of movies.  Occasionally Laura had to go away for the weekend for her other editing job and Romain and I would meet for a beer and a movie.  Captain America Winter Soldier had just come out and I really wanted to see it.  They didn't dub it, they kept it in subtitles. Everything but when the bad guy on the ship in the beginning spoke French.  At that point everyone in the theatre chuckled, I thought he had said a joke, not that his expression said anything to that point.  Romain leaned over and explained- "that guy is Canadian".  

Next -part 3 Angouleme, Pau and goodbye to Bordeaux.

My long overdue post about my time in France -part one-

So I know it's been a pretty long time since I came back from this trip but I just get overwhelmed with the idea of having to do things.  That and it's so much easier to just sit at my table and draw.

Well it started like this-  Guillaume Trouillard, the man in charge at Les Editions de la Cerise who publishes the French edition of CPG (known in France as La Fille Maudite du Capitaine Pirate) asked me if I would like to come to France for a couple of months.  I was stunned by the opportunity and didn't really believe it would happen.  Guillaume knew of a residency program and thought I had a good chance of getting in.  It turned out he was right.  I was offered a 10 week residency where I'd be staying in a small house in a city called Bassens, just outside of Bordeaux, I'd even have a car at my disposal.  It was through Chateau Brignon a group of educators using the comic arts to reach out to kids.  La Fille Maudite was coming out at pretty much the same time so Guillaume had also arranged for a bunch of signings in different cities and at a couple of festivals.  It was an amazing trip,  I made a bunch of lifelong friends there and I am constantly daydreaming on returning.

Here is what the two editions look like next to each other.  Cerise did a fantastic job!  Guillaume, Vincent and Laura came to pick me up from the airport in Bordeaux.  Vincent Perriot (a very notable artist in his own right and a good friend to Guillaume) had the car and Laura (the person I came to rely upon the most and whom I am very happy to call a true friend and who is an editor at La Cerise) spoke English fluently.  The picture just below is of Guillaume and Vincent on my first day in Bordeaux

 This picture (although from my second trip to France, at the end of the Angouleme festival this year) shows from left to right- Julien (another member of La Cerise), Guillaume, Laura and Vincent.  It's one of the rare times Laura let herself be photographed :) Here are 4/5ths of who I truly call my French family. The only person missing from this picture is Romain, wine and whiskey expert, my movie buddy and Laura's (more than just a-) boyfriend.
 
 I do not speak French, Emily and I are currently taking a French class at Schoolcraft College.  I had no problems interacting with people over there though.  For the most part everyone I came across spoke enough English that we could understand each other.  If not through words then gestures and actions.  I found everyone I came across extremely joyful and welcoming.

Anyway, Guillaume, Vincent and Laura drove me to my little house in Bassens and then took me to the Cerise Studio in Bordeaux.

These are pictures of where I stayed. That is my little white Renault that took me to the Super U to get groceries every week.  In the front yard there is a cherry tree that fruited while I stayed there.  I could walk out and pick cherries, at least until I discovered that the flies were also very familiar with my cherry tree and would lay eggs in the cherries :(

Here it is on my first day, still in bloom.  When I first arrived I had to share the house with the comic creator who had the residency just before mine for the weekend.  His name is Pierre Druilhe and although he said he didn't speak English well we still had a great time together.  Pierre is a great guy and a great comic creator.

Here are a couple of shots of the inside.  The living room where I watched a bunch of French reality tv and my little studio.  Most of the day I'd leave that window wide open.  There were a couple of times a cat would jump in and poke around a bit.  I gave him a spoonful of Biscoff cookie butter but I don't think he liked it very much, I set it outside and it took a couple of days before it vanished.

That first weekend was also the comic book festival in Carbon Blanc -Bulles en Hauts de Garonne- Pierre was signing there and Cerise had a table and advance copies of La Fille Maudite for me to sign.  After that weekend Pierre left and I had the place to myself.  The next weekend was the book festival in Bordeaux and Cerise had a table there too.  Escale Livre Bordeaux, this festival was much larger, it consisted of several different tents to accommodate different kinds of books.  There was a tent for BD (graphic novels), one for kids books and another for art, fiction, non-fiction.  The weekend after that there was a large BD festival in Aix en Provence and I was an invited guest.

The first photo up there is of a bunch of the artists/creators at the festival walking to dinner at the end of the first day.  Well this could've been of us walking to one of the gallery openings featuring one of the guests of the festival.  Art, appetizers and wine!  Then it was off to a very elaborate dinner.  Luckily I was able to tag along with a couple of fluent English speakers the whole weekend.  The second was one of the remarkable architectural elements I saw that weekend.  And the third was a shot of one of the very strange crustacean costumes that wandered around the festival streets.  I had a severe culture shock when it came to lunch at the show.  For many guests at shows here in the states it is a struggle to get a bite in during a show.  Many of us just try to cram things in in between signing and gabbing during a show.  During the shows in France however there would be a time when all the artists would just get up from their tables and go to lunch.  It was fantastic!  A wonderful catered buffet lunch for all the guests, including different types of dessert.  And of course wine :) After lunch you could go back to your table and sign more books, but only if you wanted to.  You could sign in at the beginning of the day and tell the show staff what hours you wanted to sign for.  They would mark it on a giant board to let people know when you'd be available.  I was not used to this so I just agreed to sign all day every day.  With an hour off for lunch of course.  The show staff was very supportive and really made me feel welcome.  I met artists from Korea, Spain and Germany as well as French artists.  I even gave in and danced the night away at the big party on Sat night.  Yep, danced until I had decided I was too sweaty and embarrassing to continue dancing.

That was the first 3 weeks, so I really didn't get much accomplished on the art end.  Except for the dozens of little dedicace drawings I did in peoples books.  One of the French phrases I became very familiar with was "c'est pour qui?" meaning "to whom is this for?"  I'd say 99.998% of people wanted personal dedications in their books.

Stay tuned for part two- Toulouse, Paris, Rouen and a step by step of the first page I finished in my little studio.

Cursed Pirate Girl chapter 4

I know a lot of people probably didn't think this would ever happen but, I have a new issue of Cursed Pirate Girl coming out in Oct.

I'd like to say thank you for everyone who has waited so very patiently.  Chapter 4, which Archaia/BOOM! has labeled Cursed Pirate Girl Annual no. 1 will be out 
in stores Oct. 14th. Here's a look at the cover-

This is a 54 page issue that answers some of the questions of Cursed Pirate Girl's history, introduces new characters and puts CPG on a treasure hunt.  There will be 2 more chapters and then a collected vol. 2 hardcover.  If you've seen me at a comic con you will have heard my spiel or sales pitch but if you haven't, here you go :) 

Cursed Pirate Girl is the story of an orphan girl who calls herself the Cursed Pirate Girl and the search for her father.  She knows he's a Pirate Captain of the mythical waters known as the Omerta Seas.  She finds her way to the Omertas guided by a talking parrot named PepperDice where she meets the Swordfish Brothers- Sir Haftu and Sir Halek who decide to chaperone her on the quest to find her father.  Together they go from pirate ship to pirate ship trying to figure out which one is her father's and why she was abandoned in the first place.  The book is drawn at actual print size, so when you open it up what you see is exactly the same size as the original art.  It is not reduced.  I pencil it out pretty thoroughly and then I ink it with a size 00 brush.


I wrote the story of Cursed Pirate Girl as a 6 chapter story.  The blue book that Archaia published collects the first 3 chapters that were published individually through Olympian Publishing.  Chapter 1 was self published in 2006 and then reprinted through Olympian in April of 2009.

  Olympian then went on to publish chapter 2 in June of 2009 and chapter 3 in October of 2009. 

 Then we raised printing costs for a soft cover trade collection on Kickstarter.  Here is the link for that video and the campaign.  It was pretty successful.  Tom Negovan, the man behind Olympian Publishing and Century Guild, wanted to concentrate on furthering my art career and wanted to pass on the book publishing end to another company.  We discussed all the indie publishers and ultimately I decided on Archaia.  I was very impressed with their artistic direction, they go an extra mile or two in making something that is more of an art piece than just a book. 

I was actually originally signed with Archaia pre-Olympian publishing.  Before I even met Tom and shortly after I self published that first issue I talked with Mark Smylie at Archaia and he said he would like to publish CPG.  At the time though Mark only wanted to publish full color books.  So I went back and colored the first two chapters in photoshop.  It was difficult for me because 1- I'm not a great colorist, and 2- I really wanted it to be black and white.  I met Tom and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse, a chance to publish the book the way I wanted to and a way to sustain myself financially that I could afford to put the time into the book it really deserved.  Unfortunately for my audience it means you have to wait a couple of years in between chapters because I have gotten used to a certain personal standard in my work that is impossible to adjust.  But hey, in like another 10 years the complete story will be done and hopefully have been out there for a couple of years :)