Getting My Hygge On in Denmark!

The reason I was drawing Mads Mikkelsen (see yesterday’s Sketch o’the Week) live in front of an audience was that I was a guest at the Art-Bubble Comic Arts Festival a few weekends ago in Aarhus, Denmark.

There is a big difference between a European Comic Arts Festival and a United States Comic Arts Convention. The former is a more intimate, personal celebration of the art of comics and cartooning, and people who create them. The latter is a huge sea of humanity where the focus is mostly on commerce, cosplay, TV/movies and celebrity photo/autograph ops.

Don’t get me wrong, I love doing comic-cons. Amid the bustle and craziness and cosplaying I get ample opportunity to meet and talk to people as they stop by my booth. I’m also not adverse to selling my books, prints, and other junk and doing drawings for people because it’s not cheap to attend these cons. However even though there are exhibitor tables at the European style festivals, the focus is more on the programming and interacting with the area the festival is in, as well as more accessibility to creators who attend.

Art-Bubble is a great example of this. It’s an intimate, very laid back gathering of comic creators and fans of comics. It was a smaller but dedicated group of attendees which makes it easy to get to know people, have full conversations, and see the entire venue and all the programming that was offered with ease. They had some amazing comic artist guests like Oplev Diala Brisley, Eleonora Carlini, Gary Erskine, Vincenzo Balzano and many incredible Danish creators.

Part of the Art-Bubble exhibitor’s floor

There were exhibitor tables of course, mostly Danish comics artists and writers, showcasing a wide variety of styles and storytelling. Some really fantastic work.

Art-Bubble was held at the Dokk1 library/event center, which was a really cool venue right on the harbor with great views and lots of space. The ceiling of the entrance has an upside down city scape sculpture!

This is the ceiling of the Dokk1 entrance foyer

The space the festival was held in was great, the attendees were terrific, and the programming was fantastic. I did a kids caricature class, participated in a couple of “live drawing” panels, and did a presentation on MAD movie parodies and caricature, where I drew that Mads sketch.

Me talking about the history of MAD movie parodies

I also set up at a table to sign things, and ended up doing several caricatures of Carl Barks and Don Rosa for people, because the Disney Duck character comics are WILDLY popular there.

Australian artist Ron Mueck’s “The Boy” sculpture at the Aarhus Art Museum. This thing is 15 ft tall!

Denmark itself is a beautiful and delightful country. The Lovely Anna and I spend an entirely too short few days in Copenhagen, before heading up to Aarhus, which was a charming town with plenty to see and do. A couple of years ago I did one of my many illustrations for Jeff Dunham‘s tour for his show in Copenhagen. I researched the city (and asked a friend from Denmark his advice) to decide what I needed to draw to represent the area. I came up with this:

From the left, the beer is a copy-right free representation of Carlsberg lager, which began brewing in Copenhagen in 1847 and is basically the national drink, the two soccer balls represent two competing football clubs in the city, in the middle is the famous “rød pølse” Danish hot dog, the colorful Nyhavn canal is in the background, the Little Mermaid is on the right reading a Hans Christian Anderson book, and Walter is wearing this goofy hand-clapping ball cap with the Danish flag on it. I checked off drinking a Carlsberg, eating a rød pølse, visiting Nyhavn, and seeing the Little Mermaid statue. Skipped going to a football game and buying the goofy hat.

Art-Bubble was a really enjoyable festival that gives Danish creators a chance to show their excellence in comics and graphic storytelling, and there is a lot of it. I highly recommend it if you find yourself in Denmark next fall.