London

November 11th, 2012

Today I visited Comiket, the alternative comics event associated with Comica, the London International Comics Festival. It was a lovely, small exhibition of independent, alternative cartoonists. I got to take part in the “live drawing parade,” where cartoonists draw for a half an hour while a video camera projects what they’re doing onto a large screen.

I created a superfast sketch-o-vision comic for the audience. That is to say, I quickly inked the pretty tight pencil I had spent a lot of time on beforehand. At first I thought the “drawing parade” meant totally spontaneous drawing for the audience, which I’ve never done before, and felt a lot of trepidation about. Then I learned that it was okay to work from a pencil sketch.

I drew a nine-panel strip about the slight mishap that befell Hol and me upon our arrival here Friday morning.

After Comiket, Hol and I made our way to Bloomsbury. Hol asked this squirrel to lead us to the bust of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square.

Then we went to Gay’s The Word for a booksigning. There was a big crowd of lovely people. Afterward we went for drinks with some of them, including Lenna Cumberbatch, who used to work on my website for me,

…and Pam Isherwood who comments frequently here on the blog.

In fact, Pam chided me a bit about how I’ve completely stopped blogging. So I am making this post to prove her wrong.