Monday, May 09, 2011

Our Lady of the Flowers


This is a one page comic essay I recently wrote and drew for Openbooktoronto.com. They're having a month long comic and graphic novel spotlight, in conjunction with the recent Toronto Comic Arts Festival. I was asked by the organizer if I wanted to write and draw a comic page about a book that I considered important or was a favourite of mine and I immediately knew which book I wanted to pick.

Our Lady of the Flowers, by Jean Genet has been a favourite book of mine for a long while now, and I was thrilled to finally be able to write a short comic about it's importance to me. I'd like to thank Openbooktoronto.com and editor Ian Daffern for giving me the opportunity and the freedom to do the piece the way I saw fit. It was posted online here.

You can read the one page comic above, or look below to see the original thumbnail drawing that lead to the final art. I painted both in gouache and ink, and you can compare the two and see the changes made along the way to the final. Please note that my comic, like the book itself, is for mature readers.