A six-week series, from March 20 to April 24, 2012.
No need to have any background or special talent in art or literature!
Reserve by sending me an email: Daniele (at) DanieleBD (dot) com.
A Graphic-Memoir Workshop from March to April 2012. Danièle Archambault
This is the last of the Photo Op Boards of Historic GS Uniforms for the 100 Hundred, Fun Hundred event.
This third board will feature uniforms from the 1960s. The Junior Girl Scout uniform worn between 1963-1968, consisted of a green dress, a green elastic belt, a sash, socks, a beret and…a bright yellow bow tie! The Brownie uniform of the same years (1961-1968) featured a brown dress, an elastic belt, brown socks, the famous beanie hat and…a bright tangerine tie! Those were the colors of the 1960s! The Brownie Girl Scout is holding a Brownie doll, wearing the original Brownie pixie-style hat.
Here’s the mock-up of this last board. As I indicated before, the final board will feature the real vintage uniforms. Only the hair, hat, legs and arms will be painted.
To find out more about the various Girl Scouts uniforms over the century, you can go this Girl Scouts online exhibit.
Junior and Brownie Girl Scout uniforms. The 1960s)
Mock-up for the Photo Op Boards of Historic Girl Scout Uniforms at the Centennial Celebration. The GS Mariner and the Summer Camp Uniforms in 1940. Danièle Archambault
We got more work done on the Photo Op Boards of Historic GS Uniforms for the 100 Hundred, Fun Hundred event.
The second board will feature uniforms from the 1940s. One of them is the first uniform of the Girl Scout Mariner (1934-1940). The Mariner program started in 1934 for older girls interested in outdoor and water based activities. The second uniform is a Summer camp uniform from 1940. The Girl Scouts who went camping had to wear this special uniform which features a shirt, a scarf and wide shorts.. The vintage uniform that will be displayed on the board belonged to Marion Mandell, one of the people involved in this project and still and active adult Girl Scouts.
Here’s the mock-up of the second board. As I indicated before, the final board will feature the real vintage uniforms. Only the hair, hat, legs and arms will be painted. That’s my job: design and painting. One more mock-up to come.
This year, Girl Scouts of USA are celebrating their100th anniversary! All over the USA, celebrations are planned. In Northern California, the GS Centennial Celebration will be held in Pleasanton, on May 5th, 2012. On that day, 20, 000 Girl Scouts are expected to participate in the 100 Hundred, Fun Hundred event.
I will be volunteering all day at the Heritage Museum building. Many wonderful items describing the history of Girl Scouting in the USA will be on display. For this event, I am working on a special and fun project with two other adult Girl Scouts, Leslie and Marion: Photo Op Boards of Historic GS Uniforms. Similar to Carnival Cut-outs, these three boards will be displayed in the Heritage Museum building. Each of them will feature two vintage GS uniforms from different eras. Girls (and adults) will be able to put their head through the holes in the boards and have their picture taken. Modern Girl Scouts in historic uniforms!
The first board will feature a Girl uniform from the 1919-1928 period. This uniform include long bloomers worn under the dress so girls could move freely, be very active and still be modest. The second uniform on that board was the one used between 1928-1935. The color is different and and the bloomers are gone.
Here’s my mock-up of this first board. Of course, the final board will feature the real uniforms. Only the hair, hat, legs and arms will be painted. That’s my job: design and painting. I’ll post the other mock-ups later…
Mock-ups for the Photo Op Boards of 1919-1928 GS Uniforms. Danièle Archambault
Un autre petit dessin pour Michèle. Mamie Blues avec son grand amour du moment.
Another drawing for Michèle. Mamie Blues and her current passion…
Michèle + IPad
Another Graphic Memoir workshop will start tomorrow, January 24th. This time, it’s a series of six weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing what the students will produce this time.
A Graphic Memoir workshop by Danièle Archambault
In a graphic memoir, an author narrates a period of her or his life, using sequential art to illustrate the story. In November, I held a workshop over the course of two afternoons during which students were introduced to this new and exciting way of preserving a significant moment of their life. Although the students did not have prior experience in that field or special background in art or literature, they produced beautiful and meaningful one-page stories. They developed their own particular story in their personal style. They chose different lay-outs to illustrate their unique stories.
I’m starting another series of Graphic-Memoir workshops on January 24. Come and learn this new way of expressing yourself in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.
Here are pages from three of the students in the fall Graphic-Memoir workshop.
For her project, Evelyne chose a special and dramatic memory from her childhood in Vietnam, at the time called “Cochinchine“. La guerre arrive en Cochinchine (1942) “The war arrives in Cochinchina“ is in French, which is the language Evelyne studied in school in Vietnam, and in color pencils. In this story, she recalls the day Japanese destroyers arrived on the beach where she was playing with family and friends, marking the beginning of the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during WW II. Evelyne starts her story with a beautiful establishing scene, capturing the playful mood at the beach on a beautiful sunny day. Quickly, we see black menacing dots on the horizon and the joyful mood changes to an atmosphere of panic. The story ends with a wide panel capturing the chaos on the beach and the family’s anguish as they see their father, a family officer, pedaling towards the bunkers from which he will keep an eye on the Japanese invaders.
A beautifully developed page, in terms of art and story. Evelyne had no prior experience in drawing. She is now planning to do more pages, keeping alive her family stories for the younger generations.
Evelyne Cole's page from the Graphic-Memoir Workshop
In December, Leslie’s whole family was taking a special trip to London to celebrate her husband’s 70th birthday. Leslie decided that her page would commemorate this special event. This is a very interesting page layout that captures the spirit of the event. At the center, we can see the computer screen with a message from the dad announcing the trip to his children. Around that central image, different members of the family are shown already dreaming about what they will be doing in London. The last panel (bottom right) show the whole family celebrating the dad’s birthday. Leslie did the original art in black ink, scanned it and then printed multiple copies. She then colored each of the pages (color pencils). She surprised her husband with the first page on his birthday in London. The others will go to the children.
A beautiful page with a clever layout capturing a special moment in a family’s life. Leslie was very hesitant and unsure of herself n the beginning. Her precious framed page will now hang in her living room.
Pas loves scuba diving. During one of those trips, Pat and her husband Mike got to swim with humpback whales in a Tongan lagoon. They chose that remote South Seas spot to see the humpbacks in the lagoon where they come each year for their calving and mating. Pat wanted to preserve this amazing experience by telling the story in a humorous way: Both whales and humans are amazed at this first encounter. Pat chose to tell her story in black and white. The simple layout is very effective at capturing the grandiosity of the event. Pat started her page with an establishing scene panel, showcasing the enormous size of the humpback whales. In the middle panels, Pat uses her own experience in scuba diving to illustrate how divers get into the water. Finally, she ends her story with another wide and simple panel, emphasizing the parallelism between the experience of both humans and whales.
A beautiful page, with a great lay-out, preserving, as Pat puts it “the encounter that was certainly the highlight of my diving years!” Pat is now working on the other stories she shared with us in the Graphic-Memoir workshop.
Pat's page from the Graphic-Memoir Workshop.
En prenant ma petite marche matinal, je croise souvent une petite famille. Maman, grand-maman, petite-fille et petit chien. Le matelas de yoga (ou Pilates?) sur le toit de la poussette, me laisse penser que cette petite famille accompagne la maman à sa classe d’exercices. Mais pourquoi la poussette de jogging? Pas pour la grand-maman sur le chemin de retour à la maison? Ou bien, mon histoire est à l’envers et c’est la grand-maman qui va à une classe de yoga et la maman qui fera son jogging en revenant à la maison? Mais pourquoi le petit chien, lui, est-il dans la poussette? Il n’a pas besoin d’exercices?
Mais le tableau est beau et les couleurs me font rêver. Un gerbe de couleurs dans le froid du matin. Oui, oui, il fait froid. 29 F, ce matin.
While taking my morning walk, I often see this little family. Mom, grand-mother, grand-daughter and the little dog. Because of the yoga mat (or Pilates?) on the top of the stroller, I imagine that this little family is walking the mom to her exercises class. But why a jogging stroller? Not for the grand-mother on her way back home? Or do I have this story wrong? Maybe the yoga mat is for the grand-mother and it’s the mother who will jog on her way back home? But why is the dog inside the stroller? Doesn’t he need exercises too?
However I like looking at them. The combination of colors is always amazing! An array of colors in a quite cold morning. 29 F this morning!
Yoga et poussette de jogging. Jogging stroller and yoga.
Bon. Je me remets à la tâche. Le prochain album de la série Histoires d’escaliers va bon train. Voici un petit exercice préliminaire: une recherche de nouveaux personnages. Croquis à la mine, puis encre noire et aquarelle pour la couleur. Pour reprendre la main.
Back to work. Focusing on the next book for Stairway Stories. Here are some sketches: looking for new characters. Pencilling, then inking then watercolor. In order to get back into the mood.
Recherche de personnages. Trying new characters.
En ce début d’année, je sors de mon cadre habituel et j’explore un nouveau style de dessins et d’histoires. La série Fables d’aujourd’hui débute avec une fable inspirée de celles de Jean de La Fontaine: Le Renard , le Loup et les Raisins. Celle-ci est construite sur le modèle de la courte fable Le Renard et les Raisins et en garde également le thème: mépriser ce qu’on ne peut obtenir. Une version moderne de la fable originale avec une finale légèrement différente. Alors que La Fontaine adresse à ses lecteurs une question de nature plutôt rhétorique: “Fit-Il pas mieux que de se plaindre?”, ici, j’attends d’eux une réflexion: “Vaut-il mieux plaindre que de se plaindre?”.
Mes décors, quant à eux, sont bien Montréalais. Et, pour cette histoire, j’ai quitté le quartier Villeray pour aller…Pouvez-vous deviner le quartier?
Je me suis inspirée pour cette histoire d’abord d’une jeune femme que j’ai rencontrée il y a plusieurs années. Elle m’avait raconté que lorsqu’elle avait dit à un jeune homme qui lui faisait la cour qu’elle était gay, celui-ci lui avait dit, très sérieusement, que c’était parce qu’elle n’avait jamais connu l’amour physique avec un homme. “Parce que, avait-il ajouté, rien ne surpasse le plaisir qu’un homme, un vrai, peut apporter!” Depuis, j’ai entendu plusieurs fois des versions similaires de cette histoire et j’ai été souvent témoin de réflexions de ce genre que certains hommes font en observant un couple de jeunes femmes amoureuses.
Ma fable est dédiée à toutes les femmes qui ont eu à entendre une telle réflexion.
Pour voir le vidéo, cliquez ici.
Le Renard, le Loup et les Raisins. Danièle Archambault.