浪漫菖蒲 / Roman shobu

This was the first page from the first journal of the new year.  I originally bought the journal in Montreal at a shop that only sold Japanese paper.  A friend of the family works there.  At first when she told me about it I couldn't believe that such a shop could exist.  But it does!  It is called Au Papier Japonais.  It is a quaint little shop that makes people like me think about opening my own shop selling the things I love.

This journal is partly to allow me a place to post the sketches I do in my paper journal.  I don't own a sketchbook (I don't like them very much), but I often draw silly pictures in my journals.  I don't produce beautiful or decent drawings everyday, but I have a good backlog of journals from the last two years so I'll put those pictures up as well when I have the time.  Many of these are kind of boring because I tend to draw a lot of the upper body and focus on the expression of the face.  I'm really not much of an artist, but I hope that this journal may lead me to try and make more comics and artwork in the near future.

The two people on the right are twins Sylvie and Gilles.  The girl on the left is Emily.  These people are my special characters, and they will appear on this journal again and again.  I want to draw a comic using these characters, but I always feel so apphrehensive about my own work so I don't...  Maybe someday or not.