Pierre Feuille Ciseaux no.6 recap
PFC #6 is a residency by Association ChiFouMi that invites comic artists/illustrators from all over the world to work on a collaborative project in France. The residency is part of the International Comics Festival in Angoulême, France. It is one of the biggest comics and arts festival in Europe.
For this year, I had the chance to join the residency among various artists such as Tara Booth, Laura Park, Anders Nilsen, Simone Roussin, Anna Haifisch, J.C. Menu and much more. We worked on many comics exercises and our main project was a loop comic which also ended up as a book. The book was sold at the festival in our exhibition at Museum du Papier in Angoulême.
The loop started with characters, objects and settings. We started a set of panels with the given element and we fill in the empty panels between artists. (I will get into details on the next blog post) When you read the whole book you can see the transition of style and storytelling each artist had to offer. I absolutely enjoy working in the same room with loads of creative people. Apart from the main comics, many people started drawing more and more and put many artworks on the wall. The energy was amazing.
Here is a glimpse of our working room :
To be honest, at first I completely doubted myself. It was surreal to be a 25-year old Thai artist who has only published a few comics inside Thailand working among professionals in the field with years and years of experience. Nobody knew my work and who I am but I was there and I felt like I had to prove myself. I often feel anxious when I complete a whole page in much less time because of my simplistic style and how I like working efficiently. I felt less of an artist compared to others but at the end I didn’t mind.
I also felt a sense of reassurance and approval throughout the residency. I was glad I could make Anders Nilsen, who drew right next to me the whole residency (which was surreal), laugh at the jokes in my comics and being interested in my ideas.
I’m still young and I’m still irrelevant in the comics world as a whole but I felt that he was not out of reach and that was a great feeling.
I’ve never been treated this well and work among so many talented artists in such a long time. It also surprised me how serious French people are about comics and how they have a whole history about it which is extremely rare in Thailand. It is considered and art form and enjoyed by people of every age. It was so nice to see all the artists react to rare original comic panels from the 40s-50s which we had the privilege to view in the vault of the museum. You can tell when something has been someone’s whole life. Comics is a big part of their lives.
I feel inspired to draw more and to keep the storytelling aspect of my work alive as I feel I can benefit from having an experience in comics while doing more experimental work.
Here are some more pictures from the residency :
td @ ual 