BD

The BD, "band dessinée", or graphic novel is hugely popular in France, and there was an exhibition this weekend at Château Gontier, perhaps half an hour from my place, so I went to see.

I rather like BDs, though I'm not an addict as many French seem to be.  But I see it as a perfectly good art form, and I like the way that it provides a big outlet for graphic artists in France, whereas the market is very much smaller (relatively) in the English-speaking world.  And they seem to me to represent a strong argument against putting everything on Kindle.

Actually I'd like to see the Shakespeare plays in BD form.  I find reading the raw text to be rather dry, although do-able, and I think that a BD interpretation in the hands of a talented artist could lift them onto a different plane.  And you could keep the original text intact.

I stumbled across a guy, Yann Lesacher, at a small stand, he was selling the books he has produced, showing his watercolours and sketches of the Brittany coast.  He's going along the GR34, a long coastal footpath known as le sentier des douaniers, the customs officers' path, making sketches and watercolours as he goes.  The pictures in his books are leavened by light-hearted or humerous comments that sometimes relate to the pictures, sometimes don't.   He's on his eighth volume of books, and you can find more of his work here.