This was are year end party with the students work on display. That's Ken in the wild shirt, I was wearing my traditional turkey on my head for my final critique!

HAPPY NEW YEAR and happy birthday to me!

I had some amazing students and models this year.

This was the last class of the year... these guys had so much fun!

KEN AND I WILL BE AT FANEXPO IN VANCOUVER NOV. 11-13 
JUST LOOK FOR ME IN ARTIST ALLY, P.06 - I'LL BE DRAWING CARICARTOONS!!!
:^)
http://fanexpovancouver.com

This is a sneak peek into my studio with script on the left and a work in progress that is finished now and posted. I can't believe I'm getting closer to finishing my book... only 20 or 30 more pages to go. It can be difficult at times to get these pages done but I try to pace myself. Ha - it always worked at exam time!

Matt on the mat... and check out the new easels we now have!

I had my students model for Halloween this year. We had fun!

I couldn't think of what to carve this year but I had some old peppers in the fridge... so that gave me an idea to make a cat.

We're in our fifth year of the Comics and Graphic Novel program at Camosun College. The time has flown by, I guess that means I'm having so much fun!!! Another year of amazing students, they already draw very well, my job is to help them fine tune there figure drawing skills. Thurs. we started drawing the draped figure, I was so lucky to find a Cosplay model, the wings were a nice touch!

It is with great sadness that I dedicate this post to Ian Ross, a student in last year's Comics & Graphic Novels program, who passed away in August. I had the pleasure of working with him and getting to know him as his teacher. He entered as a mature student at the age of 54, and worked really hard to complete the program. The artwork above is the last assignment he handed in to my class. I told him that everything, including the composition, colour, design and text, made the image work so well, and that the stye was wonderfully raw and sophisticated at the same time. It would make a great book cover or album jacket for a band called... The Innocent! 

Ian worked diligently on every project he did and accomplished a lot in this last year, even though he had difficulty at times... but he persevered to the end. His future plans with his new found skills included returning to Quebec to write and draw a biography of his father, which would've been wonderful. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family. 

www.legacy.com/obituaries/timescolonist/obituary.aspx?pid=181226666

This is the sculpture Ken pulled out of the ocean! It's now in my backyard.

Now that I'm back from Ontario, I've been going through some of my reference photos. I took these for page 30 where I showed a mural project in progress for Alex's grade 4 class. I was hoping the mural would still be there at the end of this hallway after all these years but sadly it wasn't... The school had turned back the clock to what it had looked like when we moved to Victoria in 1987. The same institutional colours and cookie cutter art work is back in 2016! I was so disappointed because for the time my sons were at this school, I made it my mission to change the look of the place. At the time I managed to convince the principle to let me change the colour of the walls and doors - that was a start. I then gave art workshops  to help students think outside the box, the work they produce was put in art frames and adorned the walls for many years. I had many parents volunteer to change the artwork, several times a year. We did the dragon mural as well as instillation pieces in the stairwells, which are gone as well. I had so much fun working with the kids and I was grateful the principle at the time was so supportive of new ideas instead of the standard institutional art work you see below.

These last two images were the preliminary drawings we did for the mural piece. In a workshop I did I had shown them a slide show of visual puns which included a lot of M. C. Escher's work. If you look closely at the upper drawing you'll see the names of the students and their parts of the dragon that created the whole picture.

I just thought I'd include these pages to show my process in creating a comic page. This method works best for me, even though it may look somewhat crude. I tried the Fan Boy layout pads but I found the size of the image area a bit to small for me.  I start my process with my  rough script, then I break down the dialogue into pages, then edit some more with Ken's help...I often agree with some of the edits but not always! The top page with the ketchup was interesting because Ken and I got into an argument about the dialogue "clean this up!" he thought I should say " and clean this up!" which I felt diminished the impact, it took me awhile to convince him but I think it works better.
When I do my rough layouts I try to keep them simple and fluid which makes it easer to make changes. From these layouts I go straight to the full size comic page and start penciling. Both of these finished pages are posted already, so you can have a look at the changes I made.

This is my set up at the Calgary Expo back in April, best show ever! 

It's always great to have my subject make a funny face!

Just a few pics of the drawing room at Camosun Comic Art Festival.

I'm still here but have been neglect in my postings, I admire anyone who can keep any consistent blogs. I had to take a long brake from posting pages, it's not easy to keep up the pace. 
In the last few months we finished off our 4th year of teaching the Comics program at Camosun. What a blast that was, every year I'm amazed at the calibre of students work! We put on our 4th Camosun Comic Arts Festival to showcase the students work and mix them up with professional  comic artist . After that, Ken and I went to the Calgary Expo...best year ever! We also did a mini con in Naniamo, then Ken went to TCAF and I went toVanCAF - a busy time for us both. But... I did manage to do 7 more pages and will resume posting at a slower pace, 2 pages every other week, starting July 1st. I hope you're still with me and I'll try and post a few things, occasionally. I'm currently in summer mode now and in Ontario enjoying the heat! Have a great summer!!!  :^)

I'm off to Calgary Expo!

It's that time of year again when we have our comic arts festival! We're into our 4th year of teaching and putting on the festival. Our students are working diligently in finishing off their final projects to be presented on the 16th! Please come and join us.

OMG!!! This is me back in the late 70's Was cosplay even a word back then? Ken and I got dressed up for a halloween party - he went as Garth Vader... Darths younger brother! I'll try and find a photo of that.

The first page of book three will be posted Friday... finally!!! Then two pages every Fri. till  its done!