Space Girls

Promised some drawings from Mary, the girl sitting next to me at Expozine last weekend. Her table was filled with posters, zines, craft items from her and her friends. Seemed to be doing good business. She was nice enough to draw the space girl above in my watercolour book. I nearly screwed it up putting watercolour on it later (she'd said I should do that), because the drawing was in water soluble ink, but I think it's okay.

Very interesting how it's a totally different style from the kinds of things I do. This is my space girl, for instance:


I was tempted to say it's a girl vs. guy art thing, with girls doing decorative playful things, while guys are more technical, trying to imitate life. But then I thought of a lot of guys who do the simpler style, such as Marc Bell, and Siris.

Anyhow, I think both styles are great. Of course, I love playing with the realism, but enjoy simple, designy things, too. Here are some people faces from the fair, which Mary drew that day:

Expozine Day 2

I splurged for a table this time, so I wasn't just sitting in the cafeteria area drawing folks. Didn't sell a ton of magazines, but had fun and met people, which I suppose is the point. My book looked kind of the same amidst all the other books. So I just painted faces of the funny people all day long.



The girl beside me drew some cool things, and gave them to me. I'll post them when I find them. Hope this is enough for now!

Expozine Day One

In a rush, but I scanned these last night. Faces in a crowd, like petals on a wet, black bough. More later! Thanks, bye.

Cats Approve New Zine

The cats check the new zine, Cock N' Bull Nights, arrived fresh from the printer for this weekend's Expozine Zine Fair in Montreal. They gave it their approval, but want the box when I'm done with it.



This is a self-published zine of sketches I've mainly posted on this blog, done in collaboration with Rick Gagnon, who was also instrumental in putting together the publication.



I think I know what to do, now, so if this is popular, maybe I'll put out a "Utopia Moment" zine of just my own drawings. The main trick is to get all the pages in the right order.

More Expozine

Just summing up the 2 posts below: Here's photos from day 1. This is day 2. Any comments, corrections or additions are greatly appreciated, thanks!

Here's another person's set of photos, which zooms out a little and gives a neat overall impression of the event: [link]




These are sketches I drew at Expozine 2007 this weekend. Now, I will get to labelling all of those photos in the flickr set.

Well, that's done. Apologies to people I shot, gave cards too, and then left out because thier photos were too blurry even for me. Thiswaystupidbird, for one.



These are two women, above, by the way.



Here's a movie of Sirkowski's rat at the exhib.:

Expozine, 2007, Day Two

So, I posted my shots taken at Expozine in Montreal, today. Will take a bit of time to identify everyone, and I'll add to this post. Four of the pics didn't work out (when you see the ones that went up, you'll know that they weren't usable).

Click on the pic above to visit the flickr stream.

Expozine 2007, Day One

I've put up the photos taken at Expozine today. Haven't correlated all the info I took down for the captions yet, but will do it this evening, and tomorrow.

Well, that didn't work as well as I hoped, because the pictures didn't upload in the order I took them in, and it was hard to remember all the faces, which names went with which. I think generally I did not too bad.

In the meantime, people might like to look at the pics. There's a virtue in being fast with this sort of thing. Please click on the photo above to begin the adventure.

More Expozine

Video of Expozine from Sirkowski, which features three, count 'em, three, dogs.



And another one here, from a blog called Spectraverse:



Some people weren't too crazy about me taking photos of artwork, so in general, I concentrated on faces in my own pictures.

Update: Hey, I got featured on T. Spurgeon's The Comics Reporter!

Expozine, 2006

What a day. Went to Expozine, the zine and comics fair today (actually yesterday) in Montreal, and I was determined to be a paparazzo. Had my little digital camera with me, and a full 512 meg of RAM (plus a spare battery), and I was going to make one of those cool photo sets which I had enjoyed when they were of some far-off convention or event I couldn't attend. Next best thing to being there! Hope you enjoy it. Please click on Louis Rastelli below to get started on the set.



Unfortunately, while I told myself I would record everybody's name in my notebook to match up with the pictures, that wasn't to be (need an assistant, like one of those hip fashion photogs.). So my next job will be to send e-mails to all the people I collected material and addresses from, and hope they write in with corrections I can add to the photo descriptions. One never knows, if flickr lasts for a while, it might be an historical document.

I'm a very nervous photographer, and many of the pictures are a little blurry because of the low light, or my unsteady hand. Still, they give an impression of the event. Below are some sketches I painted while relaxing from all the meeting of people and taking of pictures. That's more congenial to me, but it would have been worse trying to draw watercolour sketches of everyone at their tables instead.

Lots of bigger publishers there, such as Drawn and Quarterly and Mechanique Generale, but I was attracted to the smaller creators. I'm grateful to them for letting me take snaps.







Well, now I'll send out all those e-mails! There's a pile of books that nearly covers the floor in front of me as I type.