UNLiKE

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!