Politics, activism, social memoir, reportage and fashion comics
Still can’t crack the Observer/Cape/Comica contest! Oh well, here’s my entry from this year. Click the pages and then click again to see them at full size.
I’ll probably do my usual round-up of other entries in a blog post, so let me know if you’ve put yours online and I’ll link to it.
I don’t think I’ve ever been reviewed on a podcast before, so it’s thrilling to have been featured on the Lakes Comic Art Festival one – you can hear Ian and Nikki struggling with my name here, just after Nikki declares that she’d like to keep Darryl Cunningham locked up in a dungeon… dangerous stuff for me to have been listening to while out for a run, because running and laughing are not terribly compatible.
I’m in good company, what with reviews of the Corbyn comic and Darryl’s latest in the same segment. That all comes pretty early on, but if you keep listening you also get a run-down of festival highlights from real insiders, so I recommend that. Heck, you might as well go and listen to the entire back catalogue, since they’ve covered many top-quality comics makers across the 13 previous episodes too.
The Lakes festival is going to be loads of fun this year: not only are there so many great events in the programme, but there will also be some fantastic comic-makers selling their wares.
My partner-in-comics Zara Slattery and I have a table on the ground floor of the clocktower building again; you can see where we’ll be, and everyone else, on this plan (PDF).
Well, from me, you’ll be able to get comics, stickers, postcards and posters. Here’s a quick run-down of everything I’m planning to pack into my bulging suitcases.
Ladies of the Lakes If you enjoyed the serialised story from last year’s festival, now’s your chance to buy it in print form with a beautiful matte cover that makes you want to stroke it all day.
Everything my 10 year-old daughter wore in November The pocket-sized comic with the extra-long name. She’s 12 now, but you can still enjoy this glimpse into a tween’s eccentric clothing habits.
Two Birds Zara and I are in the process of having our first joint comic reprinted – all the same content, but in a larger format. One for the completist collector — or anyone who found the lettering a little too small in the original.
#HelloWorld A post-apocalyptic short story that (literally) unfolds into an Instagram feed.
I have two sets of designs this year. The first are, well, I can best describe them as having a loose theme of ‘things everyone likes’. Everyone likes a picnic, right? No-one hates a rainbow. And who would turn a puffin down?
These are beautifully printed by Moo and also have that matte finish that I love.
And the second series are my best-sellers but recoloured for a fresh look. They’re smaller than the ones above, standard postcard size:
These are just great for sticking on laptops, sketchbooks, skateboards, and anywhere else you want to project a comics-positive message. Give them to your child and then watch it come back to bite you when you tell them to read a prose book for their homework (why yes, I do speak from experience).
… so, I look forward to seeing you at the Lakes, if you can make it. Remember to bring cash, and lots of it — I know from experience that there will be plenty to tempt you beyond our own table.
Do not fret. All of these will also be available online after I return.
As you may have noticed (although you’d have to be quite the Myfanwy Tristram superfan if you had, and I’m not sure I have any), I’ve removed my shop from this website for now.
This is because the software I was previously using changed from being a free service to a paid-for one, which is entirely reasonable on their behalf, just not very suitable for people with modest selling ambitions.
Sadly, I won’t be at Thought Bubble this weekend — just jealously reading the tweets of everyone who is there, instead. I’m fascinated to know how the new citycentre venue works out, and not least whether the proximity to cashpoints (not a strong point of the previous venue) results in more sales all round!
But I digress. I’m posting because it just occurred to me today that of course, my strip Hashtag Underdog, is in this year’s official anthology. It was actually way back in 2015 that it came second in the Thought Bubble Comic Art competition, but last year’s anthology was a special commemorative edition and didn’t include the winners as it normally would have.
But, wait a year, and here it is (now perhaps you can see why I had forgotten until today).
There’s lots of other good stuff in it as well of course, AND the proceeds go to Barnardo’s, so make sure you pick one up if you’re going to be at the festival. If you’re not, you can buy a digital version here — and it also sounds like they will be available via the major comic shops too.
Meanwhile, you can peruse this year’s entries to the competition on the Thought Bubble website, and that’s just what I’m going to do now, to see if I can figure out who is most likely to be featured in the 2018 anthology.
Judging by some of the comments online, a lot of people find Jeremy Corbyn rather upsetting.
Personally, I find him quite comforting, and it was only recently that I realised why this is: he has a lot in common with my mum.
My mum rides a bike, tucks her trousers into her socks so they don’t get caught in the chain, is an active member of CND, and, for many years she had an allotment.
On balance, I think I’d far rather Jezza than Theresa May, both as a parent and as a PM. If your mum is more into asymmetrical necklines, holding hands with US presidents and running through fields of wheat, I can see how you might feel differently.
Such was my train of thought when I found out that comic publisher SelfMadeHero was calling for strips on the theme of Jeremy Corbyn for a compendium book they’re planning on selling at the Labour Party conference.
In the end, though, I went for a storyline featuring Corbyn’s famous cat El Gato. I just learned yesterday that it hadn’t been selected: it looks like SelfMadeHero had a really whopping response, so although I am sad that Corbyn, not to mention El Gato, won’t get to see my work, I’m not entirely surprised (and besides, I’ll forgive them anything given that they’re about to bring out a graphic biography of my favourite singer of all time).
So never mind: here’s my submission anyway — click each page to see it at a slightly larger size.
If you’re similarly one of the unselected and you’d like people to see your work anyway, do feel free to link to it in the comments below. I’d love to read it!
If you enjoyed reading Ladies of the Lakes, you may like to know that I’ve had a small run printed up, and it’s now for sale in my shop.
The story happens in and around the Lakes Comics Festival, and I’ll be there again this October. It seems likely that these will appeal to the festival-goers in Kendal (well, I hope so!) and that’s why I’ve had them printed, but I’ll also be putting them in a few local comic shops, and of course selling them directly online.
As usual, Rich at Comic Printing UK has done a really superb job with the quality of paper and print — they feel lovely — so while this might be the most redundant recommendation in the Small Press world (I suspect most UK comic makers already know about him) let me get in a quick recommendation for his services, if you’re in the market for printing too.
There’s a fab shop in Brighton called Blackout, which sells all manner of brightly-coloured stuff from around the world. Don’t visit if you’re a minimalist!
They’ve been running workshops over Easter and my daughter and I popped in with a friend to do their Marimekko-inspired bird collage session (possibly a string of words you would only hear uttered in Brighton). You can see mine, above, on the right, and my daughter’s on the left.
Here’s the workshop in progress (image credit Blackout): you can just see my right eye peeking out from behind the instructor, Caroline — best view of me, probably. It was very nice to have the kids and the adults all mucking in together on the same project.
I knew I liked Marimekko, but this was also a good reminder that I enjoy collage and I really must get back to doing some more — and not least because I have tins of nice scraps of paper saved for such a purpose.
Save
At first it feels like my pastel explorations are in direct opposition to my digital forays but I think they both have something in common – I’m rediscovering media where it’s super-easy to create almost any colour you choose to.
Save
Save
Now that Ladies of the Lakes is largely out of the way (I am going to redraw two or three frames and add a cover before I send it to the printers), I’ve finally had time to play with my new laptop.
We’re very lucky at my workplace, in that they provide us with a laptop to work on: our choice of model, up to a price limit. If we want to, we can add our own money on top to get a more expensive one, and that’s how I have come into possession of a machine that I’d never have considered buying outright for my own purposes only – the Microsoft Surface Book.
I’m enjoying it for my work needs, and getting used to the fact that it’s a tablet/laptop hybrid: you can remove the screen and use it on its own, and even with the keyboard part attached, you can still navigate and interact via the touchscreen.
But what I’m enjoying it for outside my work hours is the fact that, with the special pen it comes bundled with, you can draw directly onto the screen. Now, it’s not like I’ve never done any digital drawing, but this is different from what I’m used to with my desktop, where I plug in a Wacom tablet sometimes: there, you’re drawing on the flat surface in front of you, but seeing the results come up on the monitor.
I wanted some time to figure out the set-up, and after frustrating experiences finding out, for example, that my version of the Photoshop Elements program wasn’t compatible with the Surface Pen, and researching various other apps, I came across Leonardo, which was specifically developed with the Surface Book in mind.
Cannily, they offer a trial period, perhaps in the knowledge that once you try it out you’ll be hooked. Leonardo doesn’t offer quite everything I’m used to in Photoshop (for example there’s no way to export in CMYK, no importing of brushes, and no clone stamp – plus lots of other features no doubt that I haven’t yet come across) but I do like the ‘infinite canvas’ which ensures you never run out of space to draw on, and I’m finding the shortcut menus really handy.
Here’s me giving it some trial runs:
No need to tell you what my train of thought was at this point – you can see for yourself.
And then I decided to try it out on a cover for Ladies of the Lakes (I drew in pencil, scanned in and then coloured over the top – this is it mid-colouring):
and finally I’ve been mucking about with an idea for the flyleaves:
Still needs a bit of work but I’m impressed with what you can do on a screen. I think my next challenge is going to be learning how to make brush strokes look a bit more natural and less ‘digital’.
Save
Save
One egg with a chicken on it, one with flowers on it, one with experimental pastels on it (yes, it turns out pastels draw beautifully on an egg shell, but I hadn’t factored in the fact that the fixative would drip. A finer mist probably would have worked).
And one blank egg because the daughter has currently decided (despite my stance of ‘no such thing’) that all her drawings are rubbish. Hopefully she’ll pull something together before egg-rolling tomorrow. Since they all get smashed by the time they reach the bottom, rubbish drawings may actually be the best strategy!
I’ve always counted Paula Rego among my favourite artists, but before I watched this documentary (Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories) I didn’t know the half of her life story, and how it has fed into her pictures. Having now sat down and watched in riveted attention twice over, I’m finding her work all the more resonant.
One thing to take away from this film is the fact that she’s clearly worked away at her drawing every single day for years, driven — to the detriment of her maternal duties, as she freely admits! I’m always captivated (and slightly jealous) of those who have followed the life of an artist to the exclusion of all else, although beguiling as it is to see her many-coloured pastels and huge artist’s studio, there’s nothing to envy in the life story that unfolds. She endured poverty, a difficult marriage, multiple abortions, and the terminal illness of her husband before becoming the celebrated artist of today.
Art aside, it’s amazing to see a life that was captured so thoroughly in home movies and photographs. Rego was a stunning younger woman: you get to see her from childhood through to the older lady she is now.
Unfortunately, I think you can only watch if you’re in the UK, and it’s only up on the BBC site until 23 April*; however, it has all the signs of a film that will also be travelling to arthouse cinemas and festivals, so keep an eye out if you can.
Now perhaps it’s rather crass to take such inspiration and turn it into something consumerist, but one side effect of having seen the art-materials pornography of those vibrant sticks in close-up as they press and crumble against the sugar paper, was that I went and bought a nice new set of pastels. To be fair to myself, I had also been a very brave person and endured root canal surgery that day, so I was due some kind of treat.
I took my pastels to my regular life-drawing slot this week and really enjoyed the ease of use – I’ve been having a hard time recently, struggling a bit with watercolour and pencil crayon, so it was nice to work at a larger scale and more freely. I’m no Paula Rego, but, hey, I can smoosh pastels onto paper with the best of them.
The model was Frankie, whose hair is a wonder to behold: it really is that long, and she goes by the name of Floor-length Frankie.
—
*If I have counted properly, but the BBC tell you what date it went up and how many days it’ll be available, and I’m not sure how they calculate the start day. Do just hurry, as I’d hate for you to miss it by one day just because of my poor understanding of calendars.
Save
It’s quite an odd feeling to package a picture up and hope that it arrives at its destination safely, but I’m delighted to have been asked to loan a drawing to the forthcoming exhibition ‘The Inking Woman’, at the Cartoon Museum in London. Not least because of its excellent name: extra biscuits to whoever thought that up!
The exhibition will show cartoon and comics work by women artists from the 19th and 20th centuries to the present day: I haven’t seen the full list of exhibitors yet, but I know that it will feature lots of my comics friends and associates including the brilliant Zara Slattery, Karrie Fransman, Kate Evans, Paula Knight and Hannah Eaton. It looks like it will also travel briefly, as I’ve loaned my work until the end of 2018.
I’m pleased, because this bright drawing didn’t scan brilliantly and so the version I show on screen isn’t as satisfactory as the original. Those who encounter it in the real world will also be able to see where I stuck paper over messy bits of wording, for a second attempt!
(And yes yes, I’m also pleased because it’s an exhibition that celebrates women in comics! More of this sort of thing).
I’m really pleased to say that I have a small illustration in the Illustrated Women in History exhibition and the accompanying zine.
The exhibition is up in Swindon Central Library now, and runs until the end of April. You can buy the zine here.
Its maker, Julie Gough, has for some time now been doing a great job of collecting pictures and short biographies of women from a variety of artists — this is the third issue of Illustrated Women in History. She herself is on a mission to draw a woman a week: the project was prompted by the scandalous story of a London museum which gained planning permission on the grounds that it would celebrate the lives of women. When it opened, it had somehow transformed into a Jack the Ripper ‘attraction’.
Julie’s exhibition and zine profile women as diverse as Tove Jansson, Banana Yoshimoto, Boudicca and Grace Jones. For my own submission, I chose to draw Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon. I could identify with her a little, as I enjoy running myself — albeit on a much less ambitious scale — and I found her story interesting (and, it should be noted, not entirely without controversy).
In reading up on Switzer, I discovered that running, like so many other areas of life (and even those which seem so obviously gender neutral in the present day), was once a far more male-dominated pursuit. Suffice to say that the sports bra wasn’t even invented until 1975.
This is my illustration (along with genuine quotes from other runners, journalists and race officials of the time); it takes some liberties with colour and clothing, as I wanted her to stand out. It was in fact raining on the day, and in Switzer’s own account she notes that she was annoyed at having to wear a grey full-length sweat suit, the only weatherproof running gear available in those days. Again, rather different to today’s picture when the sports shops are bursting with lycra running gear with a different colour for each season.
If you’d like to see the accompanying biography, and many more pictures of interesting women by lots of talented artists, you’ll have to swing by Swindon library, or grab a copy of the zine for yourself. Thanks to Julie for bringing so many women, some obscure and forgotten, back to light.
Here is the final part:
In which we are on the last leg of our trip home, and continue to hit problems.
… and that was the end of our trip, but there’s an epilogue, so please do come back one more time tomorrow.
 
Myfanwy Tristram