London Print Studio Comics

First blog post by the newest interns: Here we go!
Last week we had a chance to get out of the studio and explore London a little, which was great for inspiration (and for Shamisa, our Flemish intern, who has never been to London before!).

We started off with a visit to the people at House of Illustration, who are very supportive of our project. They’re currently running their second illustration competition in conjunction with the Folio Society, which you can find details of here.

We then visited the Sir John Soane Museum – a wonderfully eccentric collection of artefacts hidden away in the beautiful home of Sir John Soane. We were all in awe of the brilliant design of the house too, what with the original owner being an architect. It was fantastic inspiration for us to see such eccentricities in what should be simply an elaborate home – gave us all great ideas for settings and backgrounds in our comics!

After that we nipped across to the Hunterian Museum. This is a fantastic place for studying anatomy in many ways – from the outside and in! There are so many great specimens to look at and most of us took the opportunity to get some sketches in. A recommended visit for any artist.

Following a bit of a grossing-out at the Hunterian, we had lunch together – and it was a chance for Jade to snap a couple of pictures of the new interns. Unfortunately, Susan was at home with flu that day, and Jade was bordering on it so she stayed behind the camera – but you’ll get to see them in snaps of workshops at a later date no doubt.

Lily and Merlin~

Shamisa and Abe!

After lunch we headed for the British Museum – we visited the print rooms which had some beautiful, unbelievably detailed ink drawings, and the new Manga exhibition on the adventures of Professor Munakata. Seeing the original sketched, inked and screentoned pages of this manga by Hoshino Yukinobu was amazing for us as comic artists; it’s always a good experience to see how other comic artists go through their process of making a page.

Finally, we went on a hunt for comic book shops! We visited Forbidden Planet, which has an
amazingly well stocked basement, and Orbital Comics, which had an exhibition featuring some brilliant British comic artists’ self portraits. Our day of exploring ended there but there are plenty of other great places in London (and out of it) that you can visit if you want inspiration for your comics. So explore! Get out there! Informing yourself informs your comics and makes them much more interesting to read, so do it~!