cwisnia

For my kind $7 Patrons, I recently posted a ton of samples of my artistic process for my brand new, upcoming graphic novel that has consumed all my creative time lately, and which is called UNLiKE.

Here I’m posting some artistic influences that got me to the artistic style I chose for my figures.

In this post, let’s look at Henri Matisse!

I only recently began to delight in the female portraits by Matisse. They’re so simple, elegant, and his use of color and pattern is just breath-taking.

When as an adult I first decided I wanted to commit and really make some comics, I read Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Something that always stuck with me in McCloud’s book is that he suggested 1. Simplify imagery so that the reader can fill in the details with her/his imagination. Make it cartoony. It works for comics, and it’s effective, according to McCloud. I never knew if I agreed with that idea, because some of my favorite comics artists are the least cartoony. But even that said, I recognize a “cartoony-ness” to some of my favorite artists: Kirby. Mignola. Allred. And so here I am finally deciding to give this advice a try with my new UNLiKE project, having that “make it cartoony” suggestion scratching at the back of my brain for all these years, finally giving it a try. 2. Use a lot of textures. I warmed to this idea quicker than the other, but don’t feel like I’ve fully tried to embrace it until this new project of mine. And it was in thinking about these Matisse images that I went, “Ah. This is what he’s talking about.”

I’m assuming my project, UNLiKE, will be in black-and-white at this point, but I endeavor to make it as lovely through uses of pattern as possible, thanks to the inspiration of Matisse here.

For my kind $7 Patrons, I recently posted a ton of samples of my artistic process for my brand new, upcoming graphic novel that has consumed all my creative time lately, and which is called UNLiKE.

Here I’m posting some artistic influences that got me to the artistic style I chose for my figures.

In this post, let’s look at Henri Rousseau!

I’ve told this story often, but when I was young, I hated Jack Kirby’s artwork. I hated that it wasn’t more realistic. I hated how he drew anatomy, I thought his characters’ faces – men and women – were ugly, stupid. I hated how he drew hands. I hated the exaggeration of the blocky body poses. I hated the square buildings and machinery. And most of all I hated that shine he put on people’s arms and legs and backs. I would become furious if I bought a comic and then realized at home that the art inside was Kirby’s work.

But then I went to college and studied art. And out of college, I was talking with a friend about how little I cared for Kirby’s work, and I listed all the things that irritated me. And my friend said, Exactly. But that’s all the reasons I LOVE KIRBY!

And that made me take a step back. Because in college, I was studying all this artwork that through reality out the window. Abstract work, surrealist work, German Expressionist work, non-representational work that wasn’t even about anything. And I realized, I had to re-evaluate my opinion of Kirby. It wasn’t fair for me to hate all these aspects but then revere them when the works of art on the museum were doing the same thing. And so I pulled out all my Kirby work again, and I viewed it now with a completely different set of eyes. It gave me a whole new respect and awe and appreciation, and I realized now that I loved it more than perhaps any other comics artist.

Henri Rousseau boastingly considered himself a great painter, if not the greatest painter of all time. He was routinely ridiculed by the art community of his period, however Picasso was buying cheap paintings at a junk shop so that he could use the canvases by painting over them – and he discovered a painting of e, which he was delighted by. So Picasso’s support helped create an interest in Rousseau.

Rousseau was completely self taught, and he didn’t begin painting until he was forty years old, and he was poor his whole life, although he received a small pension from his life’s work as a custom’s officer, which afforded him the luxury of being able to paint in his old age. His anatomy is so childish and simplistic, but so specific. You can easily recognize that any of his paintings are distinctly his.

His Football Players ranks as one of my favorite paintings ever. And I was really thinking about these characters’ arms and legs and hands and fingers for my UNLiKE project.

Yesterday, For my kind $7 Patrons, I posted a bunch of examples of my artistic process, creating the world and people of my new project, UNLiKE. I just realized I didn’t post any examples of art that influenced the development of this look, for my characters and their anatomy. Below, please enjoy the first installment of some artists or art pieces that I was thinking about, and that were influencing choices I made in creating my own characters.

First up, and foremost: Jean Dubuffet!

Jean Dubuffet is an artist I discovered in college. He was interested in tapping into the raw, energetic imagination and immediacy he saw in the art of children and “the insane.” His work simplified physical forms into ideas or symbols that convey them. Dots for eyes. A line for a mouth.

I have been a guest at some schools to teach making comics, and one thing I always say is that a great comics artist doesn’t have to be a great artist. You don’t have to be able to draw an amazing picture of your face that looks just like a photo. You don’t have to draw a car that looks like you could open the door and sit down into it. A comics artist simply needs to convey in pictures a story that is easily “readible” to the viewer. By this, I mean that each character must be distinctive from the others (if you put a hat on one and a mustache on the other, then voila! anyone reading the book will easily know which character is which), objects are recognizable enough that we know what they are, and when our eye goes from panel to panel, we understand what actions have occurred, and we aren’t confused or wondering about any of these elements. That’s it. That’s all you need to be able to do as an artist. If you can do that with stick figures, then that’s good enough to make you a great comics artist!

I wanted to create a simplistic art style that can convey my story. This is a conscious decision, and it will serve the story in that I want simple art to be paired with a gut-punchingly intense storyline. So pairing artwork down to simplicity in the ways Dubuffet does were high on my mind for this project. It’s a guy with a beard. It’s guys in a car. It’s guys playing instruments.

His work is super textural, and this might be the aspect that I loved most. That or his playfulness and sense of humor. For my UNLiKE project, I considered for long periods, and then later re-considered and second-guessed myself, if I should be trying to get some of this great texture into my stories. So far, I’ve opted not to, but you never know!