I love a project, and creating a graphic memoir over the summer gave me plenty to do while recovering from a broken foot. Instead of a paint brush, I picked up my Sharpie extra-fine-point pen and began sketching.  Some drawings were done from memory and others from pictures of my recent ancestors. The sample picture above relates to stories told me by my grandma Nona who grew up in a one-room cabin in the Oregon Territory. .Her childhood was one of extreme deprivation, but one year she received an orange for Christmas, which she said was one of her happiest memories. So I imagined her as a little girl and did this crude sketch.

I come from a family of immigrants, French on my Dad’s side and Croatian on my mom’s, so there were lots of stories that could be told with a cartoon-like drawing and a little text. My goal was to make books to give to my 3 sons and my grandchildren. When the almost 50-page memoir was completed, I put it on a flash drive and took it to FedEx. The nice people there put it together for me into a soft-cover loose-leaf book.

My point is that you as an artist could create your own graphic memoir!

KC