This one is made with things collected during a walk in Chinatown with my friend Gracie. We went to the goth stuff and outfit store Doll Funeral, as well as the best comic book store in Toronto, the Beguiling.
This one is from a day with my boyfriend at the Toronto Reference Library –– one of my favourite place in the city to hang out. We went and had a coffee and some snack at Balzac's, the library cafe. Then we spend a whole afternoon in the library reading and writing the script for my comic. I love the Reference Library soooooo much!!! It is such a romantic yet modern place. I feel like Obi-wan in that one scene in Attack of the Clones where he's in a futuristic library filled with information. Not only is there four stories worth of books, there's also many great seats for you to curl up in. It's wonderful.
The bookmark on the left is taken from the local second hand book store, Seeker's Books.
I have become a little more involved with the guys teach me Hegel, designing their stickers and going to their events. Every Thursday evening they host a little lecture about various topics in philosophy and psychoanalysis, which I attend if the topic interest me. Afterwards, everyone goes to the local bar and has some beer which is very fun. This page is from the time I went to their lecture about Kant. During the bar time I sketched some of the people that are there.
These are a cool communist flyer, logo of the group that teaches me Hegel (Res Futura), and a flyer for a local Jarty (jean party). I did not attend the Jarty because I am deathly afraid of making new friends and I dislike places with loud noise.
The page on the left is from the day I visited my friend Emily. We went to her house and she made us some delicious shakshuka. After that, we visited the Secret Planet print shop where I got the free anti-ICE sticker. We then got some ice cream and went to Bidaasigae park. There, we looked at some birds and tried to identify them with a poorly designed bird identification app.
The page on the right is from a free print I found in the local Trotskyite bookstore.
On this day, I went to the zoo with my boyfriend and his mom. I woke up early in the morning to make Japanese mushroom rice, cherry tomatoes, and some jam filled cookies. I then met up with my boyfriend and we travelled on the subway all the way to the zoo. We met up with bf's mom and start looking. There was a new born giraffe but unfortunately it has already clocked out by the time we get to it. We did see many other cool animals like African penguins, gorillas, komodo dragons, ginormous cockroaches, and naked mole rats.
Afterwards, we went to an Indian restaurant (bf's family is from the UK) and enjoyed some delicious Indian food. Ever since then I've been looking at a bunch of Indian recipes, but I feel too anxious to try making any of them as they all include steps and ingredients unimaginable in a Taiwanese kitchen.
Around this time I got accepted to be a vendor at Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), which is the biggest comic event in the city!!! I was previously waitlisted, and considering that it was only two weeks away from the event I thought there's no hope for me, so this was a very pleasant surprise! However, I had already booked a market on the first day of TCAF which meant I needed to prepare two table setups. On top of that, I only have two weeks to prepare!!! I was freaking out and pacing back and forth in my room. The checklist on the left of the page is my attempt to keep my nerves under control.
This is my drawing of Saw Gerrera after watching three episodes of the Star Wars TV show, Andor. The show was great and I need to finish it. Page on the right is a card I picked up at the aforementioned comic book store, the Beguiling.
On the left side we have a beautiful promotion material for TCAF drawn by manga artist Battan, on the right is an old man I sketched at the reference library (I only go to a few places), a receipt of a comic book I took out, and my shopping list.
Another sketch done after a Res Futura lecture. This lecture was very good! The lecturer, Naseem, is a practising psychoanalyst. He talked about the epistemology of psychoanalysis on two levels 1) How does a psychoanalyst know that the theory is correct? 2) How does a psychoanalyst know that specific interpretations made in treatment are valid? It was very interesting and helpful because it sometimes feels like psychoanalytically informed theorists are just saying whatever.
The drawing is of a woman I saw at the bar. She does not look as wicked in person, it was just a bad drawing.
TCAF was a two day event. On the first day, I also needed to be at another market –– Fierce and Fabulous Expo. Since F&F was only a one day event, I figured I should be there personally and go to TCAF on day two so I can be in both events for at least one day. I set up my TCAF table the night before and my F&F table the morning of. Then I dispatched my friend Gracie and my bf to sit at the TCAF table while me and my friend Jo sat at F&F.
The sketches in the page are done while I was at F&F waiting for costumers to come. F&F really sucked. Not only is the vending fee higher than your usual conventions, it also had much lower foot traffic than they promised. Moreover, they did not provide tables and chairs so I had to carry a 6 ft table and two chairs, as well as my merch, to the venue. The whole time there's a DJ doing an extremely loud set, to the point that I had to yell to my costumers. Just terrible experience all around.
Fortunately, my bf and Gracie are making A LOT of sales over at TCAF so I wasn't too depressed. (Plus I got a free yapsesh and chucklefest with Jo, which was a lot of fun.)
Day 2 at TCAF was FANTASTIC. Complete night and day compared to F&F. I was making non-stop sales and did not get to finish even one sketch. I saw some old classmates that I've not seen since I graduated, and I finally met some of my Instagram mutuals, which was so fun! Because I was so busy selling comics I didn't get to walk around other people's booth all that much and only ended up getting two little prints:( But ultimately it was a very good and flattering experience.
Gracie bought me the sticker on the bottom left of Chiikawa as Mr. Mistofelees. Hilarious.
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