Julian Lawrence

In the summer of 2018, Lawrence relocated to Middlesbrough, UK, where he currently works as Senior Lecturer in the Comics and Graphic Novels B.A. Honours program at Teesside University.

In May 2017, he completed a master's degree in art education at University of British Columbia. Much of his recent comics work concentrates on comics as research tool in pedagogy.

In 2014, Lawrence re-purposed his character Drippy the Newsboy as the protagonist for a comic book trilogy based on the writings of American author Stephen Crane. Lawrence emulated Crane's literary narrative style by contrasting exceptionally detailed artwork with slang-filled dialogue. Conundrum Press has published two volumes of The Adventures of Drippy the Newsboy: Volume I: Drippy's Mama (2015); and Volume II: The Red Drip of Courage (2015). The final book in the trilogy, Volume III: The Dripping Boat is scheduled for release in May, 2020.

In 2007, Lawrence contributed artwork to The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam, a graphic novel documenting the life of a once famous Chinese vaudeville performer. The book was named on the American Library Association's Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens and won the Doug Wright Award in 2008. Lawrence also worked on the animated film adaptation, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Between 2003-2018, Lawrence was an instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where he designed and delivered courses on Graphic Novel narrative structures; expression and character; professional practices and autobiographic storytelling.

In the spring of 1999, Lawrence co-created (along with Robert Dayton) the Drippy Gazette – a short-lived (12 issues) monthly two-color newspaper featuring comics from Vancouver artists, with each issue cover featuring an anthropomorphized raindrop named Drippy the Newsboy. From this, Lawrence subsequently won a grant from the Xeric Foundation in 2000 which he used to help publish Drippytown Comics, an anthology series which grew out from the Gazette and served to showcase the work of each contributing artist. Notable artists included Colin Upton and Jason Turner.

Lawrence began his teaching career in the late 1990s as a guest artist in local Vancouver schools, where he would teach simple drawing techniques to students during art lessons. In 2009, he joined the roster of artists at ArtStarts, a government funded charitable organization that promotes integrating art into school curriculum. As a result, Lawrence began using comics as a tool for achieving multi-disciplinary learning outcomes.

In 1989, Lawrence moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he worked as an independent artist on a variety of projects, including: writer/illustrator for Fantagraphics (three issues of “Crucial Fiction”, a historical biography comic series); storyboard artist for the a.k.a. Cartoon animated series Ed, Edd n Eddy; character designer for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network animated series Artie the Ant and Senior Editor at Zeros2Heroes Media.

Born in Portsmouth, England, Lawrence immigrated as a child with his family to Québec in the mid-1960's, during an era of intense anti-English sentiment in that Province. To cope with the social rejection from his Francophone classmates, Lawrence turned to reading and writing comics for both entertainment and as a tool for improving his French language literacy.