Tuesday 26 November 2013

Photos from The Lakes International Comic Art festival

I am a little behind with this blog so I'm going to finish writing about LICAF, I have PAGES of notes I made at the talks but I think I will keep it brief (try to).


On 19/10/13 I went to The Art of the Memoir talk. on stage was...Nicola Streeton (not in picture), Mary Talbot, Nye Wright, Katie Green, and Al Davidson (the pioneer of autobiographical comics) . Mary Talbot said some very interesting and relevant things, relevant to me at this point in my Masters study. Talbot stated that telling a story is like telling a joke, there needs to be a hook and a twist, otherwise the story can become boring. Mary went on to say that writers need to choose the interesting events and arrange them, and to include a darkest hour or crisis point. Your life is the raw material and is not a story until you arrange it, and also, just because it happened..,it doesn't make it interesting, choose carefully. This information is so useful to me at the moment as I am writing a memoir for my Masters course.


These next pictures are from the Riding on the Underground talk featuring Hunt Emerson and Gilbert Shelton. Hunt suggested that comics are in a 'code' or shorthand and that artists need to learn to use this language.



Here I am at the pub after all the talks...thirsty work taking all those notes! Looks who's behind me...Steve Bell on the left (no pun intended) and Mary Talbot on the right!


Steve Bell and Joe Sacco discussing visual journalism. 


"...style is the name you give to your mistakes..." Steve Bell
"...I take the p**s all the time but I don't make light of it..." Steve Bell
 "...history and the present are intertwined...there is no beginning or end or any part absolutely contained..." Joe Sacco


Posy Simmonds had some technical problems and so we only got to see her early work on a camera rigged above a table. I enjoyed seeing bits of drawings and different sketchbooks but would have liked to have seen what other goodies she had. Simmonds had some great advice for aspiring comics artists, get ready for it....DRAW, EVERYDAY, so simple but sometimes difficult to do. Posy also likes to get the visual details correct when drawing different eras of time, she has old catalogues from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to use as reference when drawing kettles or shoes or just about anything you can think of!


Charlie (The Walking Dead) Adlard and Dan Berry with a powerful hand pose!



This was the last talk I visited titled The A-Z of Charlie Adlard, guess what it was about! Well just have a look at that last photograph and I think you can guess!

I really recommend a visit up to the lakes to this festival, it was the best festival of this year in the uk, the organizers did an outstanding job and were well supported by the volunteers who were helping out. Well done! Roll on next year!

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