Graphic Novel Your Life

Online course for adults
17 September – 26 November
Tuesdays, 18:00 – 20:00 UK Time (BST until 20 October then GMT)

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On this 10-week online course you’ll learn how to create a graphic novel based on your own life experiences. Guided by award-winning cartoonist Rachael Ball, you will breathe life into well-thought-out characters and create the key elements of a compelling plot.

Rachael will teach you how to pace your story and use visual metaphor to evoke emotion and suspense. You’ll experiment with image-making, using different media to create attention-grabbing comic page layouts through real-time exercises, tutorials, demonstrations, group discussion and feedback.

One page from a graphic novel featuring pencil drawings of two scenes where three people are piling up lots of objects taken from a shed, like bike wheels. Another person is grabbing one of those people by the collar saying not to take the radio.

One page from a graphic novel featuring pencil drawings of five scenes, a person is entering another person's room, they are in bed because its a saturday. They said that they will make a fry up when they get back. They leave and drive off in their car.

Plus, guest speakers Sabba Khan and Pippa Pal will share their experiences of developing their own graphic novels and getting them published.

By the end of the course, you will have created a strong plot, key character sheets, scripted pages, a storyboard, visual experiments, a story synopsis and a finished page of artwork. You’ll even learn how to approach a publisher with your graphic novel sample.

This course caters for beginners and skilled illustration practitioners alike. No prior experience of writing or drawing is necessary. Our small class size of no more than 16 students will ensure you receive weekly personalised feedback from Rachael and the group, helping your work to progress in a relaxed and friendly environment.

About Rachael

Rachael Ball is an acclaimed cartoonist with 16 years of teaching experience. She started cartooning for cult comic Deadline in 1988. Rachael's first graphic novel, The Inflatable Woman (Bloomsbury), was a Guardian Best Graphic Novel 2015 and her second, Wolf (SelfMadeHero), has been called “a timeless classic”. Rachael is a graphic novel mentor for LDComics and was a co-coordinator for LDC for 8 years.

About Sabba

Sabba Khan is an illustrator, architectural designer and story teller. Her work examines diasporic identities and how they are formed by the physical and non-physical structures around us. Her work is personal and emotive, and designed to illicit relational empathy, understanding and expansive ideas of a shared sense of humanity. Having lived in East London her entire life, she is fascinated by cities, density, landmarks, homes, and streets. She explores the relationship between inside / outside, private/ public, micro/ macro, individual and communal.

All of this is best encapsulated by her graphic novel, The Roles We Play, which was awarded the Jhalak Prize for best literature by a person of colour in 2022, Broken Frontier’s Break Out Talent ’22 and was nominated one of The Guardian’s best reads of 2021. Nominations include the Ignatz prize, Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, British Book Design Awards and AOI’s World Illustrations Awards. The Roles We Play is available in the US under the title What is Home, Mum?

An illustration with handwritten text. The illustration is depicting two people at Queens Market, above them there is a mountainous landscape with some housing at the foot of the mountains. There is a large bright sun.

A black and white illustration with handwritten text. A silhouette of a person wearing a headscarf, within the silhouette there is a scene of a person crossing a road with traffic lights, they appear three times.

About Pippa

Pippa Pal has always been interested in finding ways to empower people to tell their own stories, this interest began when she was working as a psychologist and now continues in her role as a humanist celebrant.

As a previous participant of Graphic Novel Your Life, Pippa realised that she too had a story she needed to tell. Listening out for Julia explores the power of communication and the impact on Julia and her friends and family as she loses her ability to speak and to make facial expressions. This is an unexpected story of love, friendship and deep connection.

Pippa is currently working on her new graphic novel, A Bouquet for Meryl, a story about an experienced funeral celebrant who knows there are always rich stories to be told about a person’s life and who is learning that she can create new stories about her own life if she can just find the courage.

A page from a graphic novel where someone is describing their mum, Julia.

A page from a graphic novel where a child is talking about their mum and how they used to be a landscape gardener and used to draw plants for their clients.

What participants of our January 2024 course said:

“The whole course was so well paced. I loved posting on the padlet and receiving feedback. Rachael has deepened and reenlivened my practice and I am so grateful.”