Creating a comic inspired from your own life

A friend contacted me a few months ago with an original idea of a wedding gift for her brother and his wife. The concept was to use snapshots of their life, and turn these into a comic page. These life stages included a trip the couple made a few years ago, their wedding, the house they bought together, and the birth of their first child a few months ago.

My friend provided me with pictures of the couple taken during these different life events. As I started to work on various sketches and became familiar with drawing these real life characters, I also worked on several possible layouts for the one page story.

Original sketches based on photographs (© Esther Bordet painting)

Possible layouts for the final comic page (© Esther Bordet painting)

The process on working on this commission was very much like working on any other comic. It included preparatory sketches, designing a page layout, drawing the pencils, and finally inking and colouring. One of the challenges was to draw real life characters, in a way that is hopefully resembling and true to who they are.

Final drawing: inked linework and final coloured page (© Esther Bordet painting)

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