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| Nom nom! |
the art and comics of Margaret Ashford-Trotter
Monday, May 28, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
eavesdropping for fun and profit (okay, not really for profit)
The story behind this begins way back when I was in a teenager and I started writing down random things that I heard people say. Eventually I had quite a collection of these quotes in my notebook, and many came from my then-daily rides on the Metro buses. In 2003 I mined this material to make a one-page comic called "Overheard on the Bus," which was published in Seattle's alt weekly, The Stranger. This comic is unfortunately not online anywhere anymore; I have a copy of the file somewhere on a CDR, but hell if I know where it is.
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I was given a copy of Syncopated (vol.3), an anthology of nonfiction comics. Imagine my surprise when I reached the third piece in the book, "Overheard Conversations" by Rina Piccolo -- not only was another weirdo out there writing down overheard snippets of dialogue, but she had also written a comic about them! Her comic is very different from mine, as she actually reflects upon the nature of these acts of voyeurism ("The majority of overheard conversations are more commonplace, even mundane. But it's often these that intrigue me the most..."), in addition to including a whole collection of funny, mysterious, and otherwise thought-provoking fragments of conversation with fictionalized speakers.
Anyway, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was looking through my notebook and rereading some of the quotes I'd written down. I'd been wanting to do a finished one-page comic for a while, since for the past year-plus I've been primarily working on the seemingly endless rough draft for a graphic novel. What better idea, I thought, than a sequel to the original "Overheard." So I dug out a couple of my old notebooks to reference along with the current one, and the result is what you see here. Ta da.
p.s. I wanted to have the text appear after the comic, but realized that on many peoples' screens (such as mine, ahem), parts of the panels would be obscured by all the crap on your right. I can't make the comic smaller, because it is already more blurry than I would like at this size. At the end of the day, after hours of coloring and other stuff, I am too tired to figure out doing anything about this.
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I was given a copy of Syncopated (vol.3), an anthology of nonfiction comics. Imagine my surprise when I reached the third piece in the book, "Overheard Conversations" by Rina Piccolo -- not only was another weirdo out there writing down overheard snippets of dialogue, but she had also written a comic about them! Her comic is very different from mine, as she actually reflects upon the nature of these acts of voyeurism ("The majority of overheard conversations are more commonplace, even mundane. But it's often these that intrigue me the most..."), in addition to including a whole collection of funny, mysterious, and otherwise thought-provoking fragments of conversation with fictionalized speakers.
Anyway, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was looking through my notebook and rereading some of the quotes I'd written down. I'd been wanting to do a finished one-page comic for a while, since for the past year-plus I've been primarily working on the seemingly endless rough draft for a graphic novel. What better idea, I thought, than a sequel to the original "Overheard." So I dug out a couple of my old notebooks to reference along with the current one, and the result is what you see here. Ta da.
p.s. I wanted to have the text appear after the comic, but realized that on many peoples' screens (such as mine, ahem), parts of the panels would be obscured by all the crap on your right. I can't make the comic smaller, because it is already more blurry than I would like at this size. At the end of the day, after hours of coloring and other stuff, I am too tired to figure out doing anything about this.
Monday, May 7, 2012
beer me
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| sketch of graphic novel characters from a couple of weeks ago |
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| Rule to remember when drawing in a cafe/bar: before you put your sketchbook down on the table, make sure you're not putting it in a puddle of beer (it was a small puddle of beer, but still). You can't actually see the stain on the page here, owing to the b&w scan, but I just thought I'd put that out there as a warning. |
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