Jarnac International Comics Workshop 2023

In July 2023, the comics workshop in Jarnac was again dedicated to discussions, talks and sketching, which enabled participants to further develop their skills and individual projects. There were other initiatives, such as the one by Gordana Basta, who asked the participants to create together a joint (“jam”) drawing on a piece of fabric, which she would made into embroidery, and transform the drawing into something new, tactile and colourful.

This time the workshop participants met the comics author and painter Miroslav Sekulić Struja, originally from Croatia (and published internationally), who lives in Angouleme. In 2010, Miroslav was awarded the first prize in Angouleme comics festival for the most promising, and unpublished at the time, author. Today, he has an extensive portfolio of works published in several countries. 

A visit to Angouleme’s Comics Museum was a chance to see (aside from the permanent collection) an exhibition named Rock ! Pop! Wizz!, dedicated to the long lasting connection between comics and rock music, with original art by the leading authors from France and all around the world.  A visit was also paid to the nearby paleontological site ANGEAC-CHARENTE, one of the Europe’s largest and most important excavation sites for the remains of dinosaurs.  To complete the experience, the group of cartoonists also visited the museum in Angouleme where both archaeological materials (covering a range of a few thousand years of human history) are exhibited, next to the paleoethological material, which is based on hundreds of millions of years of natural history.