NYC: Maybe don't try to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2 hours

...And then there was a Renoir room.  We were late.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is incredible.  Lesson learned: next time I'll take at least half a day to see everything I want to and not sprint to a lunch meeting.

So no, I'm not back in NYC this week; this is a retrospective comic from my trip in July (featuring @passingfair!).  I have a BUNCH of comic ideas from the past year that I'll be going back to complete retroactively -- look forward to those! :D

What have I been up to since coming back to Portland at the end of July? 

• I scanned and edited alllllllll of my Europe sketchbooks for publication - issues 1 and 2 are out now!!  More coming soon.
• I had an art show to promote Sarah Mirk's new book, which I drew illustrations for
• I did a few solid weeks of commercial storyboarding/illustration work (much needed and appreciated!)
• I resumed work on a project with a friend and posted this little teaser for it:

• I was a guest at Boise Library Comic Con (which was a BLAST!)
• I took a short vacation to Central Oregon with some comics friends

 

• I helped out on Abigail Baird and Matthew Melis's "Aerial Animation" project (featured on America's Got Talent!)
• I met with my publisher about my next graphic novel
• I ate a LOT of Mexican food
• I did my taxes X_X
• I've been appreciating family/friends time after a year away.  Lots of movies/dinners/coffee/drinks
• I've been continuing to sketch, trading Parisians for Portlanders:

 

 

 

...and plenty of things from my imagination :)

I'll post again ASAP with more!  Thanks for reading :D

London

24 hours after hugging my mom goodbye at Charles de Gualle Airport, I was at Gare de Nord with le boyfriend on our merry way to London!  It was an accident that these two trips bumped up so closely to one another.  I was running on fumes, but we had a GREAT time and saw as much as possible in a 2-night London getaway!

A surprise gift - Cartoville's guide to London with Penelope Bagieu's delightful artwork!  I loved having this to reference and grab ideas from.

We got into London on Saturday morning, dropped off our backpacks in the hotel, and immediately started pubbing.  Our main purpose for the trip was to see friends (Mary and Sarah for me -- my friends who hosted me in December).  We ended up "grabbing a pint" with about a dozen different groups of people, and were somehow always surprised at the end of the day to find ourselves completely buttered.

Right off the bat I needed a refresher (ha!) on ales vs. lager.  I like my beer cold and well carbonated, so ales are a sad mistake for me.  I mostly stuck with names I knew, but I really liked the Dogfish Head "DNA" IPA I tried.

Sunday morning we went down to Carnaby Street for a long drawing session in Costa and then clothes shopping.  I don't have a ton of money for clothes, and consumer culture grosses me out more and more the older I get, but I do enjoy looking for one nice item to buy myself when I take a trip to remember it by.  I found a sweet, summery dress, and I know that whenever I wear it, I'll remember the trip and smile.

Of course we hit up the London comic shops, too.  I got this sweet Oyster card holder at Forbidden Planet, and we bought comics at Orbital Comics and Gosh.  Le boyfriend is showing me Doctor Who; it was really fun being back in London and seeing it through a new lens.  I noticed familiar pieces of the show everywhere, as well as plenty of ads for the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi.

It was SO FUN traveling with someone who liked to stop and draw, too.  It's a "recharge" activity for me, and if I'm tired or grumpy I can turn the day around with 60 minutes of drawing in a cafe.  With other friends, I normally have to excuse myself from another activity in order to get this time, but we stopped frequently for mutual coffeedraws and museumdraws. :)

Monday was museum day.  We hit The National Gallery, The Wellcome Collection (well, it was closed, but we went inside for lunch and a look round the shop), The Grant Museum of Zoology,  and The Charles Dickens Museum.

I tried visiting this Cézanne piece in The National Gallery that made burst into tears in December, but the entire wing was closed for rearranging.  A sympathetic museum employee told me that I could find the museum's entire collection online--how cool is that?  If you never make it to London you can still visit The National Gallery.

We spent hours in the Grant drawing the grim animal samples.  If you're an artist or enjoy studying animals/biology and you find yourself in London, don't miss it!  I really liked the fish fossils, complete rhino skeleton, giant elk antlers, and the collection of extinct animals.  The animals in jars and bisected heads were a little much for me...I've got a pretty tough stomach, but this fawn in a jar, for example, made my knees go wibbly.

Blurf

A personal highlight was visiting The Charles Dickens Museum, outfitted in a townhouse he inhabited with his family between 1837-1839.  Most London museums are pay-what-you-like (SO cool!), but we splurged on the entry fee for this one.  It was calm and quiet.  I appreciated the recreations of daily life throughout the 4-story home, from servant's rooms to writing rooms to bedrooms to washrooms to the children's play room.  I got major feels in the last exhibit--a plain white room in the attic with his words written on the walls, trying to summarize his philosophy and the impact he's had on literature.
Dickens is my favorite author; in high school I wrote my "junior paper" (to be used as a sample for college applications) on A Tale of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickleby, and David Copperfield.  He so masterfully fleshes out sprawling, inhabited worlds that feel real, and he manages to keep order and bring things back together with neat endings.  The museum highlighted Dickens' personal understanding of poverty and tragedy, and his attempts to write sympathetic characters outside of just the upper class, which was rare in Victorian literature.

Our final act before catching the train back to Paris was grabbing a pint with Agathe Peyrat, the angel-voiced singer of Inglenook. (check out some of their album work here! I love that song about Shakespeare & Co!!!)

 

Thanks for the good times, London.  You stay classy. ♥

Monkeybrain Comics publishing my Amsterdam sketchbook! Also, meet me this summer in Spain, France, or New York!

WEDNESDAY JUNE 4 -- Monkeybrain Comics is publishing a 19-page collection of my sketches from Amsterdam!  Life drawings, doodles, and comics, all completed while on the trip, in one clean digital comic file.  If you like process and sketchbooks, I think you'll enjoy this.

Yes, the cover for this digital release is where my new banner for the blog came from! ^_^

Meet me in Spain, France, or New York!
I have quite a bit of travel ahead of me, and I wanted to list it out for any readers who might be interested in a meet-up in one of these cities.  I'll try to go to cafes (and maybe bars) to life draw in each city, and give some warning on Twitter before I do.  If you'd like to join me and chat or draw, I hope you will!

June 6-8 Amiens, FRANCE (I’m a guest at the BD festival, but I’ll be around town in the evenings)
June 9-14 Annecy, FRANCE (I’m attending the Film Festival, but should have lots of free time)
June 28-29 Granada, SPAIN
June 30-July 1 Madrid, SPAIN
July 2-4 Barcelona, SPAIN
July 16-21 New York City, USA

What's new?
I had a really nice mention on the Forbidden Planet blog last week.

I animated a thing I was very happy with.

Recently I've had a flurry of meet-ups with friends and readers in Paris.  It's been really fun!  I met a couple of American backpackers on their gap year in the Tuileries Garden for a picnic and a long talk about traveling in Europe.  A reader living in France introduced me to a fun bar with French slam poetry in Belleville.  My sorority sister Kayla and friend Alyssa are on a big Eurotrip together and we met up for dinner and drinks near the St-Martin Canal.  Author Isabelle Bauthian met me for a drink and a nice talk about language, comics, and American vs French styles of acting.

I was also lucky enough to attend my first two French concerts last month.  Both venues were beautiful, old concert halls with chandeliers and decorated ceilings.  And both had seating for this old fogey!  People stood up near the front, but it was possible to enjoy the show (and my drink) from a seat.
Manu, previously of Dolly, played an intimate show at the Resevoir.  She performed new material (including a song in Japanese off of her new album!!), but also a lot of big hits from Dolly.  I even knew some of them, thanks to Nico introducing me to the band back in January. 
I also got to see Renan Luce in concert at the Trianon.  We got to sit in the center of the balcony.  This show was really fun--Renan's music is playful, and I like trying to follow the stories he's telling.  Check out La Boite if you haven't yet!

I took the B2 DELF exam this month and that was...interesting.  The 2.5 hour written exam felt fine, actually, but the oral exam was terrifying.  We had 30 minutes to read an article and draft an argumentative speech meant to last 10 minutes.  I only had my introduction and bulletpoints for the rest of my speech when we ran out of time and had to go off to our examiners. @__@ I'll find out July 8 whether or not I passed; fingers crossed!

 I went to the Arts & Metiers museum for the first time last week.  It's free every Thursday night!  The museum is dedicated to scientific tools from the 1750s to the present (everything from telescopes to looms to computers).  I love the way the instruments are presented as artwork in addition to their scientific context.  Recommended!

I got to visit another French cartoonist studio in May.  That's such a pleasure for me--I love seeing how people work, especially groups of cartoonists.  It's surprising how much we all have in common!  This studio houses a lot of cartoonists I admire, and I felt a little like I was walking on hallowed ground.  I drew a little but I mostly walked around admiring the space. :)

I got to attend the Paris premiere of Godzilla with Boulet at the Grand REX Theater, and we made reaction comics after. :) On my movie review blog, I posted about 10 new reviews in the last 3 weeks for readers who requested movies for me.

I visited Bois de Vincennes again with some friends for a picnic.  It was PACKED; I couldn't believe it.  My friend Emilie took us back into downtown Paris on foot via La Coulée Verte: a 4.7km long park built on top of an obsolete elevated train track.  VERY pretty and a nice, green break from downtown.

Last but not least, I attended the Other Writers' Group at Shakespeare & Co last night, and that was a great time.  About 20 English-language authors met to share works-in-progress and give each other rigorous constructive feedback.  I couldn't believe the meeting really took place in the picturesque second-story front room over the bookstore.  Well worth the 6 Euros, and I'm sure I'll be back.  Maybe with print-outs of my next comic if I'm feeling brave!

 

Paris - take two!

(She's referencing this comic.)

So wait, a post about Paris?  Haven't I been living in Paris since January?  Yes.  But for a week in April my mom visited, and thanks to her I got out to do and see a lot of new things in the City of Lights!

Versaille
This wasn't so high on my list, since it's a huge tourist attraction, outside of the city, expensive, and the whole point is to marvel at the incredible excess of the castle and grounds.  (The traces of opulence from the Medici family in Florence and of Napoleon in Paris were enough to turn my stomach, so Versaille...?)  BUT, I felt like it was something I really should do since I was living in Paris for so long.  My mom had visited Versaille in the past, and said that it was worth seeing, and she wanted to go again.  In the end, I was really glad we went!
**Budget travelers: EU students get in free, and the castle interiors are the only place you need a pass--the grounds are actually free!  We even saw joggers who presumably make a habit of traversing the gardens and grounds**

Predictably, my favorite part of the experience was the castle grounds.  I'm an Oregon girl, you know??  That open space and green does my heart good.

Marie Antoinette's escape-hamlet was gorgeous.  I was so stupefied the more I learned about the history of the castle, and the sub-castles the king and queen built when they wanted to "get away".  From their CASTLE.

I'm not so much a fan of bustling crowds, and I was kind of just bobbing through the interiors, trying to control my passive-aggressive elbows. x_x The Hall of Mirrors got a little claustrophobic.  But wow, there's nothing like this place.  It was cool to see and to check an item off my Paris list.

I've known about Velib since before I came to France, but my US credit card doesn't have a puce elctronique (smart chip), and there are certain places it won't work, including the Velib stations.  While my mom was visiting, I asked if we could try renting bikes with her card, and it worked!  We spent a beautiful day in Bois de Vincennes, renting bikes and breezing through the many attractions of the enormous park.  (Biking is definitely the way to see the park--on foot it would be large to the point of frustration, I think.)

Sprawling parks, floral gardens, zoo, castle, hippodrome...Bois de Vincennes has tons to offer.  Bonus: most of it is free!

It was so fun (and fast) being on a bike, we rented them again the next day, even daring to bike on the streets in downtown Paris!  One of the games with Velib is that, after buying a 1,70€ day pass, the first 30 minutes of any trip are free, meaning if you can find a Velib station and trade your bike in for a new one every 30 minutes, you can ride all day without paying more.  You find yourself getting antsy around 25 minutes and starting to scan for the next station, but it's kind of fun!  Now that I've tested the system, I think I'll go into my arrondissement's Mairie's office and buy an actual Velib card.  With the weather getting nicer, I think I could get a lot of enjoyment out of that.

 Strange shapes in the path at Parc Floral

We visited Place des Vosges several times during the week.  My mom loves this park.  It's right next to a fun part of the Marais, and the restaurant Les Bonnes Soeurs which we love for brunch (Bacon!  American portions of coffee!  The best-humored waiters in Paris!).

Le Mur des Je t'aime (Montmartre)
We tried to find this in October and failed, but April seemed to be the beginning of Paris's tourist season, and most attractions were obvious when we followed the crowd.  Created by artists Frederic Baron and Claire Kito, the mural is pretty and sweet, offering messages of love in 250 languages.  It's smothered by tourists taking photos like mine; mad props if you can photograph the whole wall without a tourist in the way.

Marché Dauphine
This permanent flea market in the north of Paris is not only fun for vintage art/vinyl/jewelry shopping -- it's also the best life drawing spot I've found so far!  The crowds are diverse and interesting.  People meander slowly through the spacious, naturally-lit warehouse, browsing the products and not really paying attention to each other.

 Love this mural at Marché Dauphine!