UNLiKE

The Web Comic:
Chapter One (26 pages – Free!)
Chapter Two (25 pages – $2 Patrons)
Chapter Three (33 pages – $2 Patrons)
Chapter Four (19 pages – $2 Patrons)
Chapter Five (32 pages – $2 Patrons)
References and Further Reading (Free!)

PERKS (Thank YOU, kind Patreon Supporters):

PDF’S!
PDF Download – UNLiKE Chapter One ($4 Patrons)
PDF Download – UNLiKE Chapter Two ($4 Patrons)
PDF Download – UNLiKE Chapter Three ($4 Patrons)
PDF Download – UNLiKE Chapter Four ($4 Patrons)
PDF Download – UNLiKE Chapter Five ($4 Patrons)

High Res Prints!
UNLiKE print – Buildings ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE print – Silhouette before a Cityscape ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE print – Windows ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE print – The City under the Cross ($4 Patrons)

Screen Savers!
UNLiKE Screen Saver – Cityscape and Smoke ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE Screen Saver – Unlike Silhouette before the City ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE Screen Saver – Cityscape 2 (page 79) ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE Screen Saver – Thomas’s Room ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE Screen Saver – Cross ($4 Patrons)
UNLiKE Screen Saver – Smoke ($4 Patrons)

commentaries:
UNLiKE – artistic style part 1 of 2 ($7 Patrons)
UNLiKE – artistic style part 2 of 2 ($7 Patrons)

UNLiKE – the people 1 of 3 ($7 Patrons)
UNLiKE – the people 2 of 3 ($7 Patrons)
UNLiKE – the people 3 of 3 ($7 Patrons)

UNLiKE – the people – Influences 1: Jean Dubuffet (Free!)
UNLiKE – the people – Influences 2: Henri Rousseau (Free!)
UNLiKE – the people – Influences 3: Henri Matisse (Free!)

Unlike is copyright Chris Wisnia Arts, Inc. (2022)

I completed this graphic novel recently, and I’ve decided I’d like to try posting it, one page per day, on all my social media. I’d love to hear whatcha think, and if reaction is good enough, I might just post the whole book this way, which will take about four months. Click my Facebook/Twitter/Instagram links above, @ChrisWisniaArts

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.