Hello my friends! I hope you're doing well. Turns out I've been blogging on my website and writing my little monthly recaps for six years now. How time flies! I didn’t think that one day it would become a newsletter as well. Thank you for reading what is essentially the very mundane non-adventures of a French Canadian cartoonist. I’m very grateful! The whole internet sucks at the moment, but I still get the same kick from sharing bits and pieces of my life as I did in 2001, in the days of my very real, very emo Livejournal. Those who know, know.
In March, I gave a dense workshop on inking and tools, in Chicoutimi. It was my first time putting together a class since my very stressful, very challenging (pandemic) year as a Color Theory/Digital art teacher. To illustrate the different kinds of inking tools, I made this!
A little robot reading a book. Robots are fun to draw!
Announcements
The Earth is round, water is wet, and I will be at the Festival Québec BD from April 12 to 14. This year I am also attending the Salon du Livre de Québec with La Courte Échelle, for the horror novel Le Cinéma de l’horreur, by Denis Côté. Here is my schedule:
Saturday April 13: 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at La Courte Échelle and 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Front Froid
Sunday April 14: 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. at La Courte Échelle and 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Front Froid.
Print of the month!
Did you know that not going to the dentist for 5 years has costly consequences? In honour of my two beautiful cavities, this month's print is an illustration of Edwin, who is the proud owner of the worst set of teeth of all my characters. Each print is signed and shipping is free until May!
Cool stuff
Oh how I missed cooking for someone dear! When the stress gets to me, cooking becomes my therapy and my refuge. My top meal this month was without a doubt my second successful chicken katsu on rice. Deep frying is a hassle but damnit, it was worth it! Here’s the recipe in any case. By the way, if you add "cooked.wiki/" (no quotations marks) before the URL of any recipe website, it’ll generate a two-column, filler-free recipe page. It’s a game changer.
This month’s plastic haul: Out of time by R.E.M, Modern Guilt by Beck and xx by The XX. This album calms my soul like nothing else.
Dragon Ball creator and legend mangaka Akira Toriyama passed away suddenly this month. He was only 68, which freaks me out. An amazing draftsman who could draw anything, he influenced entire generations of artists and cartoonists. Catsuka put together a page of tributes from all over the world.
In the past few weeks, I’ve gone from being concerned by AI to being just… incredibly bored by its constant place in the news cycle. I think I’m not the only one; the hype is dying out. A very good read: Have we Reached Peak AI?
“Sam Altman desperately needs you to believe that generative AI will be essential, inevitable and intractable, because if you don't, you'll suddenly realize that trillions of dollars of market capitalization and revenue are being blown on something remarkably mediocre. If you focus on the present — what OpenAI's technology can do today, and will likely do for some time — you see in terrifying clarity that generative AI isn't a society-altering technology, but another form of efficiency-driving cloud computing software that benefits a relatively small niche of people.”
Related: This quote I lifted from the 21_21Design Sight museum in Tokyo in 2018. It described the philosophy behind Mingei, a folk craft movement in Japan. It applies to AI content in a lot of ways!
Cool artist: Really rad retro, video game manual-inspired art from Jordan Speer.
I'm living proof that skipping flossing in your dental routine leads to a root canal. Finding out you need one will make you a flossing advocate quickly.
Toriyama's passing rocked me more than I thought it would. He wasn't a formative influence on me, but I admired his work as soon as I laid eyes upon it. I've been taking in every video retrospective, every obit, every piece of remarkable piece of fan art done in tribute. Such a terrible loss for the world of comics.
If I try the cooked wiki on “Sandwich Fillers” recipes, will it be just bread?
the inking tools drawing is gorgeous!