COP3: Scrap

I got frustrated and just started drawing friends/roommates on scrap paper. I feel this helped because it wasn't in my sketchbook, and so I didn't feel I had to draw well. All these were pretty quick! I think I can hopefully start to draw better in this project....

COP3: Queer: A Graphic History

A book I picked up at Gay's The Word, it explains a lot of queer theory with illustration, I think it's a pretty great book and a idea that can really help people starting to read into queer theory.

COP3: Research Trip to 'Gay's The Word' London

Had a great trip!

• Bought a few useful books! Some fiction books for myself and two books useful for COP. Queer: A Graphic History, and DIVA, a magazine for LGBT women. I'll look at these on my blog later.
• Talked to the manager! He was very nice and let me ask questions. I tried to keep it more like friendly discussion and not a formal interview, although I wish I could have recorded it some how.
• Talked about the film Pride (2014) and how the shop was the same as the one in the film. It was the headquarters of LGSM, or Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners
• Talked about attitude changes, how parents are more supportive now and buy books for their children.
• Apparently they have to ward off straight men who come in looking for lesbian porn??? But shows how men feel lesbian relationships are for them to look at and consume
• He talked about that there's not as many books for LGBT women as there is for LGBT men, which reflects sexism as a whole.
• Talked about how when Alison Bechdel published her collected volumes, it was always an event for the shop and its patrons because she was so popular. They also stocked some of the magazines her strips ran in.
• Thank you Jim McSweeny!

Included this visit in my essay as shown below:

COP3: Polaroid Halftone

I'm not sure if my drawings and these will ever jel well with whatever drawings I end up doing

COP3: Polaroids

Don't know if I want to include them or not. The look of the drawings vs the photos might be too different. I'm going to try halftone them and see how I feel.

COP3: Final Idea Session

• Short Comic depicting my COP research trip to London + Gay's the Word
• Two Colour?? 
• PERHAPS; look into riso printers, but also is this necessary and doable? probably not.
• 24 pages inc cover and back
• 10 comic pages
• A5
• Include Polaroids??
• Half tone for photos or draw? 
• Each page is semi independent and finishes on a photograph taken in london.
• Limited panels per page!

COP3: I'm Fed Up with The Obsession with "Coming Out"

"We expect for people who deviate from the norm to want to be normal." 

-Mads Ananda Lodahl 

I am aware Fun Home is a coming out story, obviously, and coming out stories are important, but I feel coming out stories are over done. I want more LGBT stories than just coming out. Also LGBT people don't come out once, they come out constantly throughout their lives, we come out to family, friends, etc but every time we meet someone we decide weather to tell them or not. I think it also invalidates people who can't come out for saftey reasons, and have to remain in the closet.

I feel people focus more on the idea of being "free" than the idea of why we feel the need to be "in the closet" in the first place.