Brian, Sam’s good friend and regular tennis mate, wrote me mid last month to caricature his old friend from school, Rodge. He and his friends had successfully matched him to Serene recently, and apparently the two had hit it off right from the get-go. Brian felt it’d be nice to have a funny drawing to commemorate this second spring for them.

Seeing the pictures made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside because it was obvious that the couple were literally radiating happiness, and of course I immediately agreed.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I got cracking straight away… in fact, Brian wrote me again a few weeks later, saying that Rodge & Serene (Rodgrene? Serodge? … hmm, somehow not as catchy as Brangelina or Bennifer) were celebrating their 100th day together on the 10th of July, which would be a good opportunity to hand the caricature to them. Brian even sent over some “advance payment” via Sam-post in the form of LOADS OF CHOCOLATE.

So I started drawing on the 7th :)

I felt that their key features were her wider-set eyes vs. his closer-set eyes; her small, delicate nose vs. his larger nose (that’s narrow at the bridge); and her somewhat down-turned smile vs. his up-turned smile. (Seems like opposites do attract!) But they both share the prominent cheek muscles, which are further emphasised when they’re beaming away like that! (By the way, am I the only one who thinks she looks like veteran Taiwanese talk show host Xiao Yan Jie…?)

Brian also suggested adding some coconut trees and the sea in the background, since they like the beach. I went ahead and anthropomorphised the trees and starfish for good measure.

Drawing Serene and Rodge in these poses actually took the same amount of time I spent drawing their likenesses. While trying to get Serene’s sitting-kneeling pose right, for example, I considered getting into the same pose myself and getting Sam to take a photograph of me for use as a reference. However, being wayyyyyy too arsed to do that, I google image-searched “woman kneeling position” instead, which resulted in rather… “unwholesome” results. Ahem.

Anyway, much to my surprise, Brian wrote me a card! And I really mean, a card:

I don’t mean to be mushy but I felt so happy reading the card because it made me realise, all over again, what I enjoy about drawing – making people smile! Even when I was drawing my webcomic, I was happy to have spent however many hours I spent drawing one comic, if it could just make one person smile (though many others might’ve cringed…).

Thanks Brian, for giving me a great principle to guide me by in my caricature work :)