Friday Sketchpost: re:publica 14, Day 2

Long time, no sketch dump! In keeping with this week's comic, here are some of the sketches I did during my first day at Berlin's re:publica in May (which was Day 2 of the conference). Few places are as great for drawing from life as an event full of people and speakers. Enjoy! (I apologize for not translating the German due to time constraints.)

"at re:publica 14" recap comic + links to most of the depicted speakers here.

Part 2 of the recap comic and more sketches next week.

[ The Acid - Creeper ]

at re:publica 14

To be continued...

Readers! Back in May I was given the opportunity by a generous fan to attend two days of this year's re:publica conference, which by and large is my favorite conference to attend in Berlin. As a way of giving back and documenting my time there, I drew this comic, as well as a bunch of sketches that I will be posting too.

Day 2 (which was Day 3 of the conference) will follow next week!

People featured in this comic (among others): Jars of Clay, The Acid, Teresa Bücker, Johnny Häusler, Anne Wizorek, Kübra Gümüşay, Silan Bekjarov, Lars Müllenhaupt, Paletas Berlin, Farmer McGlitter, Ulrich Schnauss.

[ Ulrich Schnauss - I Take Comfort In Your Ignorance ]

Woods

Oh hey! I've been working on a big thing that's gonna go up the next couple of weeks. This here is a thing I drew a couple months ago that originally featured a very popular poem with a very heavily guarded copyright.

Working hard this month on an application for another thing, as well as on various freelance gigs. I'm planning to get the next Master of Survival online before the month is out. There aren't that many left...

See you next week!

[ Amanda Palmer - Dear Old House ]

"Both"

This week's post is actually a kindly authorized repost of a piece currently featured on the blog of Heimat Zine, who were my lovely table neighbors at last year's Zinefest Berlin. It was drawn in response to a prompt on the theme of secrecy. More info on this piece can be found over here!

More comics coming soon. In the meantime, I do occasional updates on my goings-on via my Patreon feed, which can be accessed by throwing a mere $1 at me whenever I post a new comic. I get to buy more Oreos, you get to see which episode of Orange Is The New Black I'm on, everyone wins.

[ Linkin Park - Irisdescent ]

Übergangsweise

[ Finch - Bury Me (demo) ]

Proposals

I was going to post this last week, then I got sidetracked by current events.

The wedding was all kinds of awesome! Now my friends, they are married. Crazy! And there was chicken for breakfast on Sunday. What a world!

I'm off to Stockholm tomorrow! See you when I get back.

[ Cooper - This Year ]

MOS #12

[ Soundtrack: Laura Imbruglia - Wouldn't Be Surprised (Live) ]

Version française.

Spoiler alert: I didn't move out. To this day, I still feel a low-level wave of panic whenever someone in the building starts drilling. I visualize most sounds when I hear them (kind of like imagining a landscape), so the kind of noise depicted here pretty much beats the will to live out of me. 

***

In current news: I'm going to Stockholm in less than a month to see my sister's graduation ceremony and bid a temporary farewell as my family will be moving base to California for a year. It costs a lot to visit Sweden and as a result I'm offering art to help cover the costs. Check it out here!

If you want to help but don't want to clutter your office with personalized art (why??), you can click the Flattr button on this page or pledge a monthly donation via Patreon.

The Clairikine Hits Stockholm Art Drive!

Photo: Tommie Hansen - CC BY 2.0

The dates: June 4 - 11, 2014

The plan: visiting Stockholm for my sister's graduation. Hitting up fave haunts. Fangirling X-Men: Days of Future Past. Grabbing a starköl. People moving! Things changing! What!
The goods: I've got some very limited personalized postcards (sketches or poetry!) and I'm opening up six commission slots, four of which are The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or X-Men themed. See below!
I am also going to give it a shot with a Google Hangout to talk about Berlin, Stockholm, comics and my cat for 45 minutes. I promise I'm good company.
Slots are reserved by clicking the donate button at the end of the post and specifying in the note to the seller what slot you want. I will then e-mail you to confirm the slot reservation.
Delivery dates are estimated. All prices include shipping to Europe; please add 3€ for shipping outside of Europe.

Celebrate the past ten years of Stockholm rootedness and help fund the madness!

**ORDERS ARE CLOSED! Thanks to everyone who donated! **

Pickup Line

The real question is: is it a pickup line-in or line-out? *ba-dum-kshh*


***

COMIC INVASION BERLIN was a huge success!

u look so tired/happy

Thanks to everyone who came out, said hi, bought comics and contributed to my bike fund by buying postcard sketches! Thanks also to my excellent table neighbors and friends for letting me take bathroom/beer/burger/oxygen breaks (note to self: hire a table buddy!).

In case you missed it, the lovely folks at FluxFM had me and festival organiser Marc Seestaedt over recently to chat about Comic Invasion, as well as about the Berlin comics scene and our personal projects. You can listen to me draw a blank on how to say "I don't know if people can tell I'm not German", in German, on the recording here. (There's also a gorgeous shot of the neighborhood around the FluxFM offices as seen from their roof. And of me pulling a face.)

Hot on those heels, I'm pleased to announce that I will be tabling at Thought Bubble Sequential Arts Festival in Leeds this year! There will most definitely be some kind of fundraiser to help pay for travel and lodging, as well as details on where I'll be at, closer to the festival date in November. I'm super-excited and will try to make a UK jaunt of it!

And speaking of fundraisers, I'm traveling to Stockholm from June 4-11, so, y'know... Watch this space! 

[ Jars of Clay - After The Fight ]

M.O.S. #11

[ Soundtrack: Fever Ray - Now's The Only Time I Know ]

Version française.

***

Things that have changed since I wrote and drew this episode:

• The amount of people in this comic that still live in Berlin (par for the course, really)
• I can barely remember liking the guy in question
• I'm not deathly afraid of shading nor spotting blacks
• My lettering looks less like it was tracked onto the page by a bunch of crickets on acid

Things that have not changed since I wrote and drew this episode:

• I still go to this church
• I still don't know how to read German men
• I still ride that S-Bahn
• I still feel both rootless and at home in Berlin

On a side note: the title of this episode is another nod to Ariel Schrag's High School Comic Chronicles, the third volume of which is called Potential and was a big influence in coming up with Master of Survival. (The other volumes are referenced here and here).

Comic Invasion Berlin!

I'm tabling at Comic Invasion Berlin next weekend, y'all! It will be my first actual comic arts festival and I am totally excited. Come see me at table 25a from 12:00 until the hour I keel over! I will have my minis, stickers, some original art and will be doing sketches too.

That's my bird up there dodging UFO laser fire, by the way.

Socializing

[ Against Me! - Stop! ]

***

I spruced up my store page a bit and added some original art on my Etsy! Have a look (also there's a shiny button on the sidebar you can click)!

How I Met Your Municipales

I don't know what hit me harder last week... Valls being made Prime Minister, or the How I Met Your Mother finale.

Seriously though, it was a one-two punch of WTF.

[ Mickey 3D - Matador ]

MOS #10

[Soundtrack: Marvin - "Closer" (Live at Intersoup)]

Version française.

Here's my dad at the Tacheles in April 2010:

***

So, DUDES -- after a long-a** hiatus, Master of Survival is back!!

There are about six episodes left to go, plus some bonus comics. How fast the comic updates depends greatly on you. It goes like this: via my Patreon page, you can pledge to donate one dollar or more per episode of Master of Survival (or filler comic between updates). The higher the pledges are, the more I can afford to focus on updating.

Patrons get charged every month depending on how many new comics I've posted (expect no more than 4 and no less than 3), and have access to weekly-ish, exclusive blog posts about whatever I'm working on.

A note on the habitual translation of the episodes: nearly all forthcoming episodes are written in English, and will be translated into French when time permits. Any episode written in French will be posted in English and French simultaneously.

That's enough on my end, I hope you enjoy the second instalment of this comic and I look forward to giving you more new pages!

Verknallt

I don't get it, it just keeps happening.

***

I've added a reward tier to my Patreon page! Patrons who pledge $2 or more per comic now get all five of my comic PDFs for free as a thank-you. If you can't be bothered to clog your hard drive, you can also pledge to donate as low as $1 per comic to help keep them going.

I also keep a sort of progress log on Patreon with process shots and updates. If you're into that kind of thing and you've always wanted to throw small amounts of money at me, it's a pretty sweet deal!

  [ Bloc Party - Kreuzberg ]

Talking

***

Hey-o, did you know that if you want to support this blog directly, you can now do so on Patreon? You can pledge $1 or more per comic that I post, and as a reward you get access to exclusive updates from the drawing board. Even a $1 pledge goes a long way and I would super super appreciate it.

There's also a date for the next Master of Survival update somewhere on there that I've otherwise been super-quiet about :V

Also, I'm curating the I AM EUROPE Twitter account this week - check it out!

[ Alkaline Trio - Mercy Me ]

Before/After

Spoiler alert: anywhere upwards of three people is too many.

***

You now have an opportunity to support my comics with monthly microdonations on Patreon! By pledging$1 or more per comic that I post in a month*, you get exclusive access to behind the scenes material AND the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting someone doing stuff that you like. I mean, I hope that I'm doing stuff that you like. Am I?

*That would be comics posted on Tuesdays, like this one -- not sketch dumps, announcements or fanart. Although if you like those you can just up your pledge a bit! Also, whether or not anyone pledges anything I will still be posting comics. The only difference is that with enough financial support I can update more regularly than I currently am!

[ Alkaline Trio - Time To Waste ]

Sunday Sketchpost: Woods

A little something I found in my sketchbook over the weekend and that I really, really like.

[ Chris Pureka - Shipwreck ]

Wednesday Workpost: GTD Personalentwicklung

Last December I was asked to illustrate a greeting card for GTD-Personalentwicklung, a small Berlin-based organisation specializing in human resources development. I  highly enjoyed the assignment, and it gave me the opportunity to do something you don't often see here - use colors!

This is the illustration I created for the card; you can see the full visual on my Behance portfolio as well as on the German site Dasauge.de.

Auf, auf!

[ Death Cab For Cutie - Lightness ]

Friday Sketchpost: Joe Czarnecki presents The Icarus Project

Last weekend was Berlin-dwelling guitarist Joe Czarnecki's first concert in two years. I've been a fan of his work since moving here and was super-happy to hear new music and old classics, some of them revisited.

Of course, if you want to practice drawing hands, why not use a tapping guitarist's hands for reference? It's not like they move or anything.

Joe's album Watch Now is one of my favorite records, right up there on my list of indispensable instrumental guitar music along with Kaki King and Kelli Rudick. Check it out!

[ Joe Czarnecki - Ocean (live) ]

National Hug Day

We often listen to Flux FM at my part-time job. You should too, as it is probably the best alternative radio station ever.

[ Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen cover) ] ]

Hourly Comics Day 2014

Hanging Loose: Keeping It Classy

Don't drink and discuss dating with deutsch dudes, peeps, it can only end in tears.

[ Dandylion - Never Look Down ]

Hanging Loose: Kidneys

Two impossible girls go 'round the outside, 'round the outside, 'round the outside

***

 STICKERS!!!

There are currently stickers in my store! And until Feb. 1, they only cost 1.99€ + shipping! Great for decorating your laptop with an expression of young urban cartoonist angst. Grab'em while they're physically manifest!

[ Death Cab For Cutie - Title and Registration ] 

2013 Recap

And thus (pretty much) concludes the madness that was 2013!

I forgot to mention this, which happened while I was in Paris the second time:

(That's the current French Prime Minister and we were in the backyard of Matignon, FYI.)

In 2014, on the personal art front, I plan on continuing drawing Master of Survival and writing Noémie, aller-retour/hin und zurück. I will also be traveling a lot for various things, which will lead to new travel journals, postcards and more exclusive art goodies to get your hands on! More will be announced in the next couple of months as travel plans unfold, so keep your eagle eyes open.

Also, as is my wont, I've compiled a small recap of the year in entertainment, visible below this cut. May 2014 bring new obsessions and hefty doses of doodling, the latter to rejoice over, the former to your possible dismay.

[ #3 Song of the Year  
#2 Song of the Year
#1 Song of the Year ]

Mixtape Monday: Car Drive 2013

A personal fact I have mentioned before: in addition to writing and drawing squiggly figures in my journal, I have also been making mixes since the dawn of time -- well, since I attended junior high and came into possession of a tape player. Being a storyteller at heart, I always strive to compose some kind of sense into the ordering of the songs - a sort of soundtrack, if you will. I find I have achieved success when the mix either gets my narrative point across or makes someone happy. (If both happen, it is doubly awesome!)

I will use the occasional Mixtape Monday post to present to you some of the mixes I am particularly proud of, and the artwork that inevitably goes with it. I open this category with the most recent edition of Car Drive, a yearly mix I force my family to listen to in the car when we drive out to the Swedish countryside. (My sister ended up "quite liking it" however, so I have reached my above-mentioned goal.)

Car Drive serves to round up (mostly) new music that either caught my attention or defined a particular moment in the eponymous year. As such, this is is truly an aural personal recap of 2013. (The comic recap is coming tomorrow!)

If you so desire, you can wrap your ears around this mix on Spotify.