Mathew and his ‘majorflaw’

KOCHI: When a storyteller is combined with an illustrator, spoken tales create pictures in the listener’s mind. Mathew Thomas is one such person. Mind you, he does not consider himself a storyteller, but a self-taught artist. The fourth-year student from College of Architecture, Thiruvananthapuram, has been creating comics since he turned 13. 

Mathew recently published his comic book based on the theme of Inktober challenge, a month-long art challenge which focuses on improving skill and developing positive drawing habits. “For the comic book, I did not choose any particular theme but did illustrations which portray a positive picture. I did one illustration each day but for me the most difficult part was  writing the story. But, when I started doing the illustrations, I gradually got the appropriate storyline,” he says. 

This self-taught artist says he did not start making comic strips with a pre-planned notion. “ I had not planned to do comic strips when I began drawing at eight. Later, after watching the comic strips made by my friend’s brother, I developed interest and experimented with comic characters for which I received good response from others,” said Mathew. A batman comic fan, Mathew’s comic characters are inspired from the people that he sees in his every day life. 

This comic artist doesn’t follow any rules in his illustrations. “It takes four to five hours to create comic characters. This is because I want to perfect my comic characters. For this particular comic book that I did based on the theme of Inktober, I linked each illustration to form a continuous story. So, each day has a theme-based illustration which connects to the next day,” he says. Mathew has been uploading his comic strips through his Instagram page ‘majorflaw’ and is presently working on his next comic strip series.