Art & Comics by Katherine Roy

I’ve been thinking a lot about thesis projects for my second graduate year at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and continue to return to the idea of doing something that takes place during a wedding, basing some of the plot on our experiences during our engagement and big event. I just ran across this quote in Wedded Bliss:

“In Western Societies today, the white wedding prevails as the dominant form of this popular ritual, and is rapidly becoming the standard for weddings internationally. Although considered traditional, this type of wedding is anything but. The stereotypical, lavish white wedding that has become a highly prescribed spectacle featuring a bride in a formal white wedding gown, a formally dressed groom, some combination of attendants and witnesses, a religious ceremony, and an elaborate– and expensive– wedding reception is largely the product of a host of marketing campaigns. The white wedding has become so overdetermined in the popular imagination that to consider an alternative seems unthinkable.”

Surely there’s something that can be said about this through comics? While keeping the theme from being so heavy handed that it becomes unreadable?

Our second year at the Center for Cartoon Studies kicks off today with Alec Longstreth’s Professional Practice class! Yahoo! I’m very excited about this year and all of the opportunities ahead, but also determined to make the most of my time and the work I have to do. David Macaulay has agreed to be my thesis advisor for the year, resuming his role as a mentor and editor from my days at RISD as a sophomore and junior. He is insightful, encouraging, and very critical; it’s all about the work to him, and I deeply appreciate his objectivity. I think it will be a great fall!

Sorry for the delay in posts, guys! Thesis work has weighed me down, but I’ve made some breakthroughs and real progress lately. Hurray!

Two weeks ago Kriota Willberg came to the Center for Cartoon Studies to teach an intensive two-day workshop on anatomy, aging, weight gain and deformity (posture problems, etc.) geared towards cartoonists to help us understand human bodies and create stronger characters. Her lectures were fascinating and I loved drawing the figure again, and she scared the crap out of all of us about staying fit and healthy (and what it looks like over time when you don’t!). Here is a quick look at what we did: our cumulative assignment was to draw a character nude, the skeleton, the muscles, weight gain (or loss), and the character older (or younger). Look at the effects of age and gravity–  yikes! I will post more figure work this week.

Back in Vermont! After a great holiday at home and a good start to the new year, I am back at home in the New England cold, swinging away at my thesis project to make some significant progress. Expect to see a lot of drawings and comics over the new few weeks from my sketchbook and desktop. Here are a few more figure drawings from Kriota’s workshop:

Structure of the figure while standing and at rest:

Various added deformities to our two models (Cave-Man & Scoliosis):

And of Kriota (such a wonderful model herself!) as she drew ON the models:

I’ve been thinking a lot about color lately. Every time the sun comes out and shines down on our little corner of New England, the snow melts just enough to slip into the street and reflect bright blue patches of sky among streaks of white salt on black asphalt. The warm yellows and cheery reds of brick buildings throw themselves at every window pane, and all of a sudden Main Street is alive and vibrant in spite of the season. I would rip off my coat and boots and dive into the color if only it weren’t so damn cold.

Last week Joe Quinones and Maris Wicks visited the Center for Cartoon Studies and gave a wonderful presentation of their work and current projects, and between their pages of comics and Alec Longstreth’s recent crash course in color theory, I am inspired to get back into figuring out what it is to use color well. This week while sitting in our local coffee shop I couldn’t help but notice a conversation in front of me, and, in my best SNEAK-ATTACK drawing style, Wacom tablet and computer already in front of me, I tried out a little color study:

And then right before I left I did another quick one, trying different colors:

And now I’m completely addicted. Expect to see more of these over the coming weeks.

A regular local. Iced coffee and a muffin for $4.04 every day.

Last week my work was hung in the Tucker Box gallery, a local coffee shop in White River Junction that exhibits work by CCS students, alumni, and fellows, along with serving delicious espresso drinks. My comic 25 Cents: A Caterpillar Tale was initially completed as a four page comic for cartooning studio, but was then reformatted and colored by Joe Lambert to be published in Seven Days Vermont Magazine about a year ago. It’s so much fun to see it at a big scale! Next to my work (right) hang the talents of former fellow Chris Wright (center) and second-year student Melissa Mendes (left). Hurray!

Who’s going to MoCCA?!

Things are in high gear here in White River Junction. The artists are drawing, the scanners are scanning, the printers are printing, and no one has slept in days. Not only is Industry Day next week, with the end of the year rapidly closing in, but the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art is holding their annual Comic Festival in New York this coming weekend! This year will be my FIRST as an exhibitor, and I will be tabling in the CCS row at G5, alongside the talents of Tim Stout, Laura Terry, Matt Aucoin, Holly Foltz, and Garry-Paul Bonesteel. I will be selling lots of Caterpillar Tales, my sketchbook from Egypt, new work, a poster, and a TOP SECRET PROJECT WITH STEVE BISSETTE! Don’t miss it! AND don’t forget to check out Caboose! a Center for Cartoon Studies anthology that will be distributed for free (FREEE!!!) all weekend at the show. Above is the cover of Caboose, drawn and colored by alumni Chuck Forsman and this year’s CCS fellow Max de Radiques.

Here’s a preview of MY WORK in Caboose, my latest installment of Caterpillar’s adventures:

Whoot! What a weekend! After carpooling down to NY with a SEQUENCE of cartoonists (thank you Miss Laura Terry) including James Sturm, Melissa Mendes, Chuck Forsman, Tim and I spent time with cartoonist friends in Brooklyn and paid a visit to Jules Feiffer before tackling the 2-day MoCCA Fest extravaganza on Saturday and Sunday. The Center for Cartoon Studies ROCKED the back wall, selling lots of comics and giving away nearly 1,000 copies of our Caboose Anthology which includes my brand new Caterpillar story. Caterpillar Tales sold well, I met a lot of really wonderful new people, and had several inspiring conversations with favorite editors and teachers. What a great show! I will be back next year for sure.

Alongside auteur works at our table was Stephen R. Bissette’s Tales of the UnCanny: N-Man and Friends! Originally created in 1993 for the comic book series 1963 (Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, Rich Veitch, Jim Valentino, Dave Gibbons, John Totleben, Chester Brown and others), these characters have been inactive for over a decade until Steve Bissette decided to bring them back to life through the Center for Cartoon Studies. Steve and co-editor Tim Stout produced a 16-page preview of the book’s grand debut in the fall of this year. For my help with the packaging and design Steve decided to put my work on the back cover. Hurray! Can’t wait to see the full 200 page version of the book!

After one day of rest and recovery from MoCCA, CCS was busy again with Industry Day, where editors from major publishers across the country visit our school to hold a panel discussion and portfolio reviews with students. This year our panel was graced with the talents of David Saylor (Scholastic Graphix), Chris Oliveros (D+Q), Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics), Colleen AF (First Second) and Douglas Wolk (freelance journalist and critic). Doulgas Wolk did a fantastic job moderating the discussion in the morning, and I found the advice, direction, and feedback I received during my review with him and with David Saylor to be very encouraging. Thank you ALL for making time to see us. I very much enjoyed our conversation.

16 days until I need to print my thesis! If only this year was just a little bit longer. My work needs just a little more time to incubate, and though I am moving forward I am still very deep in the search. The skeleton is taking shape, the plans are in view, but now the time has come to build on everything I have taken in. I am very excited about the direction this is all heading.

Sorry I’ve been so delinquent about my blog in the last couple of weeks– it is crunch time at CCS, and there is much to be done yet on my thesis! I still need to design a cover and may attempt to submit a short piece to an anthology this week, but I’m finally in the homestretch for coloring my 19 page chapter and should be done by Friday. Thank goodness! It’s taking quite a while, but our movies are keeping me company. Tim and I own over 150 films, but every time one ends I wander over to our shelves and stare for several minutes, unable to comprehend how I can be looking at so many titles and still feel like we don’t have anything to watch. There’s only so many rounds of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy that I can take, as much as I love it!

Here’s a visual of the hours logged this week!

Check out the Center for Cartoon write-up on the Fantagraphics Books blog by editor Eric Reynolds! Thanks for visiting the school Eric! So happy that like my work!

“…I’ve been to a few other schools that offer curriculums in cartooning, and hands-down, the quality of work coming out of CCS was the best I’ve ever seen. Very little work derivative of the dominant genres in comics — namely, manga and superheroes — and instead a focus on personal expression and style with little regard for learning what it takes to be a “commercial” artist. We all did portfolio reviews one afternoon and I was frankly dreading it a bit but found myself thoroughly enjoying it. I saw a *lot* of good student work, but there were several who stood out, including but not limited to Kenny Widjaja, Katherine Roy, Mark Bilokur, Casey Bohn, Jose-Luis Olivares and Nick Patten…” - Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphic Books Blog

Three days left! May 3rd is a big day for me, with BOTH my graduate thesis AND the Vermont Arts Council Creator Grant due. But things are moving along! I am about to take a break from bookbinding to complete some further writing work on my grant. The THESIS progress SO FAR:

Eight tape-bound thesis projects. Sewing: DONE!

Eight thesis projects + two test copies. End pages: DONE!

More coming soon!!

May 3rd, the big day, and everything is done! I feel relieved, satisfied, and ready to get back to my project (instead of just packaging what I’ve done thus far!) Here’s a glimpse of “Katherine’s Playground,” 140-pages fully drawn, designed, hand-sewn, silk-screened (the spine titles), and hand-bound by me. Phew! More cartooning work will be up by next week.

Welcome to Hieroglyph! This chapter of my graphic novel will be launched as a webcomic next week, to be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. See you then!

After two years of labor and hundreds of pages, my time as a student at The Center for Cartoon Studies has drawn to a close. I can’t believe how fast it has gone! The transition into life as an alumni will be a little terrifying but very exciting, and I am looking forward to whatever lies ahead.

In the meantime I thought I would share with you my final thesis project, tentatively entitled Hieroglyph, a graphic novel about an American artist traveling through Egypt. Part travelogue and part creative non-fiction, the story is based on sketches, drawings, notes, and comics from my 16-day tour of Egypt in January 2010. As part of my graduate thesis at The Center for Cartoon Studies I wrote the skeleton for the full graphic novel (about 100 pages in length) and completed a 19-page sample chapter that falls in the middle of the book. I plan to spend the summer working on bringing the writing and drawings to a more finished level so that I can more seriously explore publishing options this Fall. I’m very excited about this direction for my work; the challenges of this project have already pushed me harder and faster than anything before it, and I am excited to continue this process of creative discovery!

These drawings were done in pencil with layered watercolor beneath the line work in Photoshop. It’s been a very satisfying way to work, allowing me to maintain the immediacy of the line and adjust/redo the color as necessary.

This is the last page of repeated work from my roughs stage, posted through the spring months. Never before seen pages starting next week!!

Two months ago, The Center for Cartoon Studies founder James Sturm decided to take a four month break from the internet and write about his experience offline by publishing on Slate.com (don’t worry, the irony of keeping a blog about being offline isn’t lost on him either). Last month he asked CCS students to contribute comics about their relationship with the internet, and last week I was featured! Check it out at Slate.com

Sorry that this is a day late, folks! I didn’t have access to the internet yesterday, so for this week I’ll post Wednesday and Friday. Enjoy!

Pages 8 & 9 on Tuesday and Thursday next week. Have a great weekend all!

After taking a month off from writing and drawing to complete my MFA and a trip home to see family, getting back into my work groove has proved to be a lot more difficult than I expected. Chapter 1 of Hieroglyph had me stumped for several days, whispering convincing threats that the No Talent Police would be knocking on my door momentarily. Though that didn’t happen, I DID get pulled over for the first time for having an expired registration sticker. “Golly gee, officer! This is my first time being pulled over!” Imagine the doctor and Main Street from the film State and Main, add a police uniform and a little note pad, and you will have an image of the smiling gentleman who gave me a warning ticket. All he needed was a bow tie. Golly, it would have been great if he’d had a bow tie.

Things are finally moving on Hieroglyph, though I’m not convinced the momentum will last for long. Making a book is a puzzle that needs constant attention. It’s so satisfying when something works! and so crushing when a lead goes nowhere. But little by little I know I’ll figure it out. And if not, and the No Talent Police come to get me, my only wish is for them to be wearing bow ties.

Posts should continue to happen on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the rest of the month. Enjoy!

The building of the Nilo-O-Meter, and the subsequent discovery of the circumference of the Earth, was the most fascinating component of the crocodile temple at Kom Ombo. It’s easy to marginalize the Egyptian culture into a sideshow of mummies and sphinxes, but this, here… what a magnificent example of our curiosity and ingenuity as a civilization, and as a species, over 3,000 years ago. We have come so far, and yet I suspect that we are much the same as ever.

I hope that the chapter of Hieroglyph that I’m working on now can explore this further. I’m having my own creative war right now, but I suspect the solution isn’t too far away.

Last week we had the honor of meeting Art Spiegelman at The Center for Cartoon Studies! He happened to be in the area and offered to meet with students and hold an informal discussion about his work, his career, and his experience with comics publishing. He was funny and charming, and, to our amusement and awe, chain smoked through his entire lecture. I can’t even remember the last time I saw someone smoke indoors in a public space.

Sorry this is late! Two more weeks of installments for this story section, folks.

Just went live! An article in comics on what it’s like to campaign for governor in Vermont, by myself and James Sturm for Slate Magazine. James and I followed Matt Dunne on his last day on the campaign trail on Monday, August 23rd, from 5:30 am until about 9:30pm. All day Tuesday was spent working on compiling the piece: James wrote the story, I did the drawings, and together with Keny Widjaja we completed all the production and color completed by early Wednesday morning (today). I loved doing the work and hope to get to do more projects like it in the future.