Goodbyes & Bonjours
I recently got the opportunity to live in Saint-Etienne, France. Being such a small city, it inherently had very few people, and given the language barrier, even fewer that I could interact with. So, I spent most of my time alone with my thoughts.
I discovered the magic of journalling; putting down on paper, everything that you are thinking about, without any judgement. Most often, issues and situations that bothered me and kept clouding my mind, actually seemed so minuscule when written down and I slowly realized the humor in them, and journalling became my second nature. Every morning, I would go out in search of little stories, I would observe everything happening around me and write about them.
The beautiful cotton candy skies if Saint-Étienne inspired the colors of this book.
‘Goodbyes and Bonjours!’ is a product of that journal, an illustrated life of a foreign exchange student; small incidents compiled and strung into a small zine. I managed to make a fun project out of it. It has captured the transformation that my stay at Saint-Étienne has brought in me.
All the illustrations were first made with charcoal pencil in actual size, then scanned, colored and edited digitally on Adobe Photoshop.
Then, I printed, bound and cut copies in the color printer myself to distribute among the other exchange students from ESADSE.
In the future this would be a way for me to look back and experience those little moments of happiness all over again. The zine is a bundle of my memories, that will always be present at hand, ready to be experienced afresh.
