All posts in the ‘traveling’ Category

Oh my goodness, I’m back from my whirlwind five day trip up to Seattle! In addition to the Emerald City Comicon on the weekend, I also had a panel discussion to participate in at the Henry Art Gallery the day before!

Museology graduate student Sarra Scherb organized the Morning Serial exhibit on the role of webcomics and their evolution over the last decade and I was honored to be included as one of her six example artists!

(Click to Enlarge) I was blown away by how great the space looked! Four giant monitors rotated through our artwork, with commentary about webcomics framed in speech balloons positioned around the entire room.

(Click to Enlarge) A page from Templar, AZ, Mr. Aaron Diaz looking at his own page of Dresden Codak, and a page of Family Man.

(Click to Enlarge) My sweetass display! Awwwww yeeeeeeeah!

Emily Ivie, Aaron Diaz, Evan Dahm, and Dylan Meconis chatting before our panel begins. Unfortunately Spike had to cancel at the last minute, on account of her poor sick dog! I appreciate how it looks like that one speech balloon is coming right from Aaron’s own mouth.

It was a real pleasure getting to talk with everyone on this panel. The room was packed! Two hours flew by quickly and we covered a ton of good topics about the realities of creating comics and answering the audience’s questions.

Thank you so, so much to everyone who came out to listen and talk with us! You guys were great, for reals. And a major THANK YOU to Sarra Scherb for organizing all of this! You were amazing and the show looks fantastic.

If you live in Seattle and would like to see the Morning Serial exhibit for yourself, it will be up from March 3rd – June 30th at the Henry Art Gallery, the University of Washington’s contemporary art museum. There are still a number of upcoming, comics-related events being hosted there! Learn more information about their 5 Hour Comics Day and participation in Free Comic Book Day in April and May!

---

Erika Moen’s Posters, books, prints and original artwork

(This is part of my series of recaps about traveling to England and France last year from October 25 – November 8th, 2011)

Here is the thing, I adore the Musée d’Orsay. Focusing primarily on French artwork from the mid 1800s – early 1900s (which is super decorative and opulent), the museum itself is housed inside the most gorgeous, Beaux-Arts former railroad station– which itself is decorative and opulent to the gills.

It is my most favorite museum in the world and in the handful of times I’ve had the opportunity to visit Paris I always make a bee-line for it and draw for hours. This place inspires me like crazy, I would stay in here for days if they let me.

Until this trip.

My entire reason for coming to Paris in the first place (Matt haaaaates big cities in general and Paris in particular) was to 1) meet my internet friend, Mr. Pan, and 2) draw in the Musée d’Orsay. This was already the second day of our two-and-a-half-day long stay in Paris, tomorrow we’d be leaving around noon to catch our train to Strasbourg. Honestly, I was pretty heartbroken that I would be missing out on it this time. (I know, I know, First World Problems and all that, but really, this place means a lot to me.)

We ducked under shelter of another building’s awning while we figured out what to do from here. Already soaked through and with no rain gear whatsoever, the prospect of walking all the way back to our hostel (45 minutes away, I think) in that state was just not an option right then.

We needed shelter.

We needed… an over-priced cafe called Le Royal Orsay.

We tea’ed ourselves and leisurely waited out the worst of the downpour, Matt with his book and me with my sketchpad.

It wound up being nice a little stay, long enough for the rain to let up some– though that dang line to the museum never did. It turns out they were having some… special occasion that day? Which is why a million and a half people were waiting patiently for hours in a downpour to get in. SIGH!

Read all the Europe entries together, in reverse-chronological order.

---

Erika Moen’s Posters, books, prints and original artwork

(This is part of my series of recaps about traveling to England and France last year from October 25 – November 8th, 2011)

In Paris, Matt and I stayed at the Vintage Hostel, which, despite its name, was actually pretty modern.

I was pretty taken with their stairwell. What can I say? I just like when stairs are tightly coiled! And when they give me encouraging messages. “GO ALL THE WAY –>”, “HAVE SOME FUN”, “BE CURIOUS”, you say? Don’t mind if I do!

Matt reclines on the bed. We decided to splurge and get the tiniest private room, which felt pretty fancy-pantsy.

The view from our balcony.

I especially loved our little balcony and its adorably-colored table and chairs. Although later we had a bit of an adventure through the balcony, but I will get to that in a later entry. Just remember, here be some foreshadowing.

Vintage Hostel 73 Rue de Dunkerque Paris 75009 France

Read all the Europe entries together, in reverse-chronological order.

---

Erika Moen’s Posters, books, prints and original artwork

(This is part of my series of recaps about traveling to England and France last year from October 25 – November 8th, 2011)

At last we arrived at Paris’ Gare du Nord!

Though I didn’t realize this when we were setting up our trip, Paris Nord is the place where Matt and I met in France for the first time almost seven years ago. I mean, we met for the first time ever in England a couple months before, but it was this train station where we met up in France to go on the month-long travel adventure that would result in our falling in love.

While we were walking through the lobby I was overwhelmed with emotion when I spotted the same place I had been standing when Matt found me through the crowd all those years ago. For a moment I relived all those intense feelings of worrying that I was making a huge mistake (Committing to traveling for a month together with a guy I barely knew?? AND I was still sick with heartache for my ex! What was I thinking!?) and then feeling all of those concerns completely melt away as we made eye contact through the crowd and had that first hug and kiss that inaugurated one of the most amazing adventures of my life. (Haha, I should have taken a photo of that spot, sorry!)

First things first, once we found our hostel (more on that in my next entry!) I changed into some cuter clothes than my standard travel uniform of jeans, tank top and sneakers. Man, I dunno what it is about traveling, but even just a couple hours on the train kicks my sweat glands into overdrive and I come out smelling like a gym locker– even with pre-emptive deodorant shlacked into my armpits! (Sorry ladies, I’m taken.) But it’s nothing that a quick shower and clothing change can’t cure.

Second things second, Matt and I headed out to the nearest grocery store to stock up on the essentials. Specifically, tea.

Man, how cute are these little guys?
Then, exploration!

Finally it was time to meet up for the first time with my long time Flickr pal, Mr. Pan!

We have been internet-friends since maybe 2006? He stumbled across some of my tentacle photos in a Flickr group for octopuses back in the day and started following me, then after checking out his photos I started following him and, y’know, a photo-sharing-friendship was born! We have a mutual love of museums, classical paintings, tentacles, red hair, interesting self-portraiture and each others’ native language. I even based my painting, Je Ne Suis Pas Un Faun, on him two years ago!

He led us across the city to his favorite book store, we had a drink in a cafe, and then he helped us find the right bus back to our hostel.

(From Mr. Pan’s camera)

Dang, our first day in Paris was pretty full.

Read all the Europe entries together, in reverse-chronological order.

---

Erika Moen’s Posters, books, prints and original artwork

(This is part of my series of recaps about traveling to England and France this year from October 25 – November 8th)

The best part about visiting England is spending time with my wonderful in-laws. Matt has the most loving, accepting, multi-national family anybody could ever hope to have– they made me feel like a member of the clan well before we even started talking about marriage. I love them like my own flesh and blood and feel just as loved and embraced by them in return.

If you’ve visited Matt’s website, you’ve noticed his domain name is InternationalHobo.com– a name he chose on account of the eclectic mix of nationalities his family is composed from.

His grandmother immigrated to France from Wales as a late teenager, where she had Matt’s mother and continues to live to this day. His mother, in turn, immigrated to England from France while in her early twenties, and though she has lived in the UK longer now than she lived in her mother country she still has a lovely, strong French accent mixed in with her British one. Though Matt cannot speak it, he understands French nearly fluently on account of growing up in a household where his mom and her second, French, husband spoke the language to each other every day. Matt’s father immigrated to England from Australia, where he met and married Matt’s mother, which is, in turn, why Matt’s accent slips into an Australian twang at times (along with the American he’s picked up from me).

Coming from a family with such trans-continental itchy feet, it’s only fitting he then immigrated to the USA to marry me! He is my International Hobo.

Lookit Matthew at 18, just a year before we met. Can you blame me for cradle-robbing him as a two-years-older woman? NO, I think NOT.

The heart of his mother’s house is definitely the kitchen, where all spend most of our time together.

View of the Kitchen while sitting at the counter.

Matt and his brother.
Matt sitting at the kitchen counter.

Matthew and his mom

Matt is the cook of our little two-person family here in the states, a skill he learned from his own mom. I never ate so well in my life until Matt came along with his French cooking.

I bought some lilies for Matt’s mom.


Some sketches of the lilies, Matt’s back, and hey, why not?, some seabirds.

As an entire group, both sides of Matt’s family got together to go on an epic two hour (each way) bike ride along the English countryside.



Then we stopped at pub and had an enormous lunch followed by this dessert, that I forget the name of.

And then on a completely different day, Matt and I went to a fish’n'chips shop with his mom and she took this photo of us. It is the old guy in the background that really ties this shot together, I think.

Read all the Europe entries together, in reverse-chronological order.

---

Erika Moen’s Posters, books, prints and original artwork

(This is part of my series of recaps about traveling to England and France this year from October 25 – November 8th)

Matthew and I traveled without any sleep for pretty much an entire day (Departed Portland October 25th at 3:30pm, arrived in London on October 26th at 12pm) and then we had to stay awake the whole day so that we could force our sleep schedules to realign to our new time zone, set eight hours ahead of Portland.

(Click to See Larger)

Whenever we go back to visit Matthew’s family, he always makes a point to repair as many things around the house as he can. This time around, he had this to work with:

Notice that the left lid’s knob is not like the other’s. That’s because it got left in the oven and melted to that flat disk you see now. Due to its new transformation, it was nearly impossible to extract the bottom screw holding the top bit in place, so nobody’s been able to fix it.

Well, ol’ Matt got to work and with a lot of patience and persistence, finally managed to undo the screw and replace the knob wiiiiiiiith…..

This delightful wine stopper cork thing that he screwed in through the bottom.

Ta-dah!

He is so handy.

And then finally we got to go to sleep.

Read all the Europe entries together, in reverse-chronological order.

---

Erika Moen’s Posters, books, prints and original artwork

(Riding the MAX to get to the Portland airport)
Continuing on from my previous post, here are some of the photos and drawings I made while we were flying from Portland to Seattle to London.

Matt playing with his iPad while we wait for our first flight.

Once we landed in Seattle, we had some time to kill before our final flight, so I took the time to document the amazing light coming in through the windows.

Natural lens flare!

Dang, so pretty.

And then finally we were on our final flight, set to land in London. I forget exactly how many hours we would be flying, but we departed on October 25th at 3:30pm and arrived October 26th at 12pm, so we definitely had a very full day of traveling to look forward to.

Read all our trip’s entries together, in reverse-chronological order.

---

Erika Moen’s Posters, books, prints and original artwork

On October 25th this year, Matthew and I set off on our two week trip to Europe! Specifically, England and France. I’ve been meaning to share my photos and sketches with you guys since I got back, but I did so much of both over there that it’s been kind of daunting for me to break them down and write about ‘em all. But! Hey. I gotta start some time.

This year one of my (many, many) goals was to actually sketch more. And by “more”, I mean “at all”. Every day I draw comic pages and character designs for my various scripts, but when it comes to sitting down and just doodling away for no reason? NOPE. My mind goes blank. And as a result, I’ve felt that my drawing progress has been somewhat stagnant for the last couple years.

The last time I visited France, in 2005, I went through a real artistic blossoming where I couldn’t stop sketching and journaling. My hope with this return trip, six years later, was to maybe rekindle that spark of free-flowing creativity.

In preparation, I bought a (A) Mead Five Star soft pencil case holder that stands upright, a (B) Faber-Castell pencil sharpener specifically made for colored pencils (I have the WORST luck sharpening colored pencils! Their lead always, always, ALWAYS snaps off when I use a regular sharpener.), and, on the recommendation of my brushpen-savy studiomates, two refillable (C) Niji Waterbrushes (small and medium), along with a bit of paper towel to act as an ink blotter because the brushes have a tendency to, well, blot a bit.

On hand, I already possessed a collection of Small, Fine, and Medium sized (F) Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens (I am so partial to these guys. SUCK IT, MICRONS. Oh yeah, I went there.), my beloved (D) 0.5mm Alvin Draft Line mechanical pencil with blue lead and my back up, crappy, (D) BIC 0.7mm (also with blue lead), my brown ink (E) Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pen that I bought during my 2005 French trip and used extensively over there, though never again once returning to the USA, and a regular ol’ (E) BIC ballpoint pen. And then, of course the (G) colored pencils.

It was during my stay in France as a 21-year-old that I truly fell in love with my Prismacolor True Blue pencil, wearing it down to a diminutive length, and then never using it upon returning back to the states. It has kind of been one of my totem items that still has a strong, powerful memory-bond with me that I have kept with me for the last six years, always keeping an eye on it so that it makes it through every apartment moving I’ve undergone.

Though I would be bringing it along for good luck, I knew that it wouldn’t be able to survive a second trip as a useful drawing implement, so I picked up some substitutes in the form of Dick Blick’s Pthalo Blue pencils, which drew with the same consistency. That is, they are like drawing with butter sticks of color, it’s almost like painting.

With my art tool kit freshened up, I started sketching a bit more in the days leading up to our trip, though admittedly I still wasn’t drawing very much. But hey, any progress is welcome!

A doodle about taking a bath with Matt to help chill out my pre-flight jitters.

---

Next up, comics, artwork, and from photos from our actual trip! Here’s a handy tag to keep all our trip’s entries together, if you wanna read them in reverse-chronological order.

---

Posters, books, prints and original artwork

Hey friends, sorry for the long absence! I was gettin’ my jet set on for the last couple weeks over in England and France. Oh my goodness, I drew SO MUCH over there, I have so much to scan in and share. In the meantime, here’s a sample of the photos I took in France of some of the amazing fer forgé that I encountered EVERYWHERE.

Resuming from my previous post: Dylan Meconis and I have successfully collected Lucy Knisley from Chicago and all three of us are flying out to Toronto together to exhibit and speak at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival in beauteous Canadia!

We three brave travelers, bright and chipper at 6am.

Dylan made me a tiny tidal pool with her napkin and glass of water on the flight. She is so thoughtful like that!

At last we arrived on Canadian soil!
There was only minor confusion to be had when Lucy’s bags did not show up. But it’s cool, she tracked them down.

After some wrestling with various broken(?) machines, we finally got our bus passes to begin the long trek into the city.

Months and months ago, Lucy had gotten us a room to fit us and super awesome cartoonist Liz Bailie. We were pretty surprised to discover that our “four bed” room reservation contained, in fact, two beds. Rather than admit making a mistake or something, the manager insisted that though we had reserved a “four bed”, that actually MEANT a room with two beds that could fit four people. Except the beds weren’t even doubles! Lucy looked into finding us other accommodations, but to no avail so we spent the next few nights gettin’ our spoonin’ on.

The first order of business once we’d dropped off our stuff at the room was to seek out our fellow cartoonists and grab some food. Here’s Rich Stevens, me, Dylan, Lucy, and Meredith Gran gettin’ some sushi.

Dylan and Lucy display their preferred chopstick elevating techniques at a restaurant.

DELICIOUS BUBBLE TEA, I HAVE MISSED YOU.

Then it was off to explore the city. Including this candy store!

I am a sucker for hats but they are usually out of my price range– except for this little guy! His label says he’s named “deLux” and Lucy, Dylan and I found him in one of those expensively cute boutiques in Toronto except he was 40% off! Which meant he only cost me 15 Canadian dollars! Which, right now, I believe is still pretty close to 15 American dollars!

OH HELL YES LUCY AND I BOTH GOT OURSELVES SOME CLASSY $15 HATS.

Augh, why did we not get photos of ourselves together with hats? Whyyyyyyy? Why have I assigned my hat a male pronoun? I don’t know! He’s just a he! Who am I to hide it??


And this coffee shop! (Dylan, Rich and Jon Rosenberg)

And then it was time for dinner. Rich Stevens, Jon Rosenberg, Dylan Meconis, David McGuire and Anthony Clark. (That’s Lucy’s hand in the foreground on the left there)

Unfortunately, TCAF was SO BUSY that I only took a couple photos D:



Lucy‘s booster seat.

Alexis Barattin and me! Alexis is an incredibly talented illustrator that Matt and I have been internet friends with for AGES now. We’d actually had the chance to meet up once before a few years ago in London, England of all places (Evidence A and B), so it was super great to see her again and catch up on everything. Really, you guys should check out her art, she is an absolute powerhouse.

Also, she got this adorable mustache mug for Matt and me!

Story Time!
While Alexis was sitting with me at the table, this middle-aged, skinny man was kind of smiling to himself while very carefully going through my two portfolios of my original artwork and my prints, which are primarily composed of pretty women in various states of undress and/or holding sex toys.

After a while of this, he very patiently waits for me to finish talking to some other people and then informs me, very kindly in a light Indian accent, “I can tell… by looking at your art… that you are influenced by The Disease of Lust.”

I laughed and agreed that yes, yes that is probably true. He smiles at me and then makes a second comment about my connection to The Disease of Lust. Again, I laughed, this time a little more nervously, and agreed with him that his observation was probably correct.

Then he looks me in the eye and again with nothing but kindness in his voice and a smile on his lips tells me, “And I can tell… by the color of your hair… that you HAVE The Disease of Lust”

Welp. All I could do was laugh again and fess up that he wasn’t wrong, although at this point I was getting a little worried. He seemed harmless enough, but this conversation wasn’t really developing, if you know what I mean. We smiled at each other for a minute and when I didn’t volunteer any new topics to talk about he politely nodded his head and walked on.

But that wasn’t the end of it! Half an hour later he came back asking if I “Had a top shelf”. “Nope!” I told him and didn’t offer anything more, so again he nodded at me and walked on.

I turned to Alexis and asked “What the crap does that even mean? A TOP SHELF?” We puzzled about it for a few minutes, trying to figure out if he was looking for the publisher Top Shelf?? No, that didn’t seem likely, he seemed like one of the people who wandered into the library unaware that it had been overtaken by a comics festival (I got a couple people coming up to my table asking “What is going on in here??”). Eventually Alexis hazarded a guess that maybe he was asking about the kind of “top shelf” magazine and convenience stores have to hold their porno mags on, out of the way of the rest of their genteel clientele who don’t wanna accidentally see smut.

That explanation fit better than anything else we could figure out, so I’m guessing this guy was coming back asking to see if I had any hard core porn to sell him! If I’d figured that out sooner, maybe I coulda sold him a copy of GirlFuck! Sorry dude, maybe next year!

(PS, I’m naming my autobiography The Disease of Lust: The Erika Moen Story)


One of the major highlights of TCAF this year was getting to pick the brain of Annie Koyama of Koyama Press about becoming a publisher. Whenever people play the “What Would You Do With a Million Dollars?” game with me, my first answer is always “I WOULD MAKE MY OWN PUBLISHING HOUSE” Even though I manage to publish my own books, I have absolutely no clue how someone goes about dealing with the business side of publishing other people’s works (royalties, advances, distribution, bookkeeping, etc., etc), so I was dying to talk with Annie about how on earth she actually does all that. She gave me a waterfall of incredibly helpful and insightful information that I am still churning over in my brain. To boot, she is incredibly interesting, engaging and funny! And she gives you her own custom chocolates!! Man, wotta swell lady.

I was so surprised and happy to receive these lovely little Bucko gifts from the attendees of TCAF! Thank you, generous and talented Canadians!

Top: A wooden Bucko buckle (say that three times fast) hand-crafted from Adam Grant
Left-Right: Bucko by Peter Trinh, Jamie Campbell and Dechanique

They’re all so lovely and I’m gunna treasure the hell out of ‘em!


Toronto has an interesting concept of what constitutes “two pieces of pizza” because this is what I got after placing my order. When I pointed out there was a mistake because this was, in fact, FOUR pieces, the lady at the counter explained that no, this is two, but each piece is SO BIG it has to be cut in half for easier handling. …wish I’d known that earlier!

In addition to speaking on two panels (Ask A Freelancer with Lucy and Dylan; That Comic Isn’t About Me: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Comics with Yuko Ota, Ananth Panagariya, Jose Villarubia and Zan Christensen) I was also invited to be a panelist at the queer after event called TCAFabulous with Scott Robbins, Jose Villarubia, Maurice Vellekoop, and Zan Christensen.



Photo by QueeriesMag
The four of us made fun of “accidentally gay” covers and pages of older comics.

Jose Villarubia and me by Antoine Dodé

Then it was on to the hotel parties!



Anthony Clark, Yuko Ota, Gina Gagliano, Greg Means (? I think?) I mean Ananth, Aaron Diaz, David McGuire, Dylan Meconis.

Calista Brill and Dylan Meconis

Lucy, Rich Stevens and Dylan.

My only photo that turned out from the TCAFter party to celebrate the end of the con was of Jess Fink, which is alright in my book because the internet does not have nearly enough photos of this lady’s rad white hair, if you ask me.

Our final day in Toronto was filled with exploring the more colorful parts of the city.















I was absolutely in love with this window display.


I’ve never had my feet hurt so excruciatingly as they did that weekend! Amazing. Lucy and Dylan had to drop me off a couple times so I could just sit, massage my feet and recoup a bit and then they’d loop back for me.

Lucy and Dylan check out some Lucy-porn.

The three of us had our second-to-last meal in Toronto before heading to catch our flight (then we had another airport-food meal).

When I set up my camera on a nearby garbage can to take a picture of us, nobody else was around– but in the time it took the 10 second long timer to count down, suddenly there were, like, TEN PEOPLE all walking towards my little camera! This is me in mid-lurch rushing over to shove it safely in my pocket before a passer-by noticed a nice, abandoned camera to take home as their own.

Okay! That’s the last of my Toronto photos!

Thanks so much to everyone who bought my books (I pretty much sold out of EVERYTHING), brought me presents (!! You guuuuuys!) and treated me so goddamn well. TCAF is a really exceptional convention and I really encourage everyone to visit if they can!

Tiiiiiiil NEXT YEAR!