Penelope Bagieu at Institut Francais

There have been so many good comic events and siginings this past couple of weeks! I really didn't know where to start, so I decided to pick the one which had most impact on me. Some of you might know that I've been making the yearly pilgrimage to the Angouleme Comics Festival in France. It was there that I discovered a graphic artist Penelope Bagieu, here is a selection of some of her books...

And here is some inner artwork of Cadavre Exquis which has been made into a film.

Imagine my excitement when I discovered the lady herself would be doing a talk as part of the BD & Comics Passion Festival, so off I went to learn a bit more about french comics.

 Here is Penelope talking with Paul Gravett, I discovered she studied Animation, like I did, but gave it up to persue comics making. Bagieu stated that animation taught her how to draw and how to be an actor. We were even lucky enough to watch her draw as she spoke with Mr Gravett.

Penelope told us she gets frustrated by the tag 'Girly BD' and insists that they are good comics, with good stories and good characters. She also said that if she has a ten line bio in an article, within the the first two lines will reference to the fact she is female, to which Penelope exclaimed "Get over it!"

Here is Bagieu drawing a girl wearing a 'London style' look. 

Penelope rose to fame with her blog about her life which she drew in comics, she posted it EVERYDAY! What an inspiration, Penelope also revealed that once it was posted she would never look at it again. Maybe this is good advice for those of us making diary comics, that way you can make sure you don't censor yourself and you are writing real heartfelt accounts of life.

I was brave enough to give her some of my diary comics, here she is having a look at them.

I feel really lucky that I got to sit down and talk to her about making comics and what it is like to live in Paris, what a delightful lady she was to meet, very funny and charming, I was also lucky enough to get this amazing sketch in my book!!!