Chris Ware

Chris Ware is a sequential artist with a refined and controlled style comparable to graphic arts. Drawing with bolder line depth and flat colour, his approach to art is very different than mine as I prefer soft-cell shading more delicate and complex line work, however I found that the project was good for me, ultimately reigning in my style and simplifying the page down.

One returning element in Wares work that appealed to me most was the manipulation of time within a sequence. Using queues from the surrounding environment to squish or stretch the amount of time shown adding atmosphere and breathing time to the piece.

[1] Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

we can see from the excerpt from Jimmy Corrigan how ware has created a sense of time passing with simple environmental changes such as rain drops falling from the wires and the street lights turning on. this can be related back to my work as I display the sun setting and lights becoming more apparent in my first work displaying how the day has passed, while in my second work having the steam of a coffee cup rise while nothing else has moved in the frame, displaying the works slowness.

Ware leans towards a natural and muted pallet within his work using primary colours to highlight key moments and is often used in the design of the main character.

 

[2] The Last Saturday

in the first few pages of the last Saturday we are introduced to our main character that immediately stands out from the background his clothing made up of tints, tones and a small amount of saturated blue while backgrounds are largely made from muted tones, although there is not much difference of line depth from foreground to background these colour choices make figures become the focus of the panel. Relating this method to my experiment we can see that the main focus is the characters face with its saturated green eyes and light blue face mask.

Ware sometimes uses a highly graphical non linear sequence usually linking back to a main image. using panels of different sizes and shapes, often using scattering seemingly unrelated sequences throughout the page often linking back to a central figure in the sequence. 

"your working in discreet units of pages which are sort of analogous to the way that we divide and break up our own memories and where we choose to start and stop them, one of the reasons why I try, at least to make the books look as nice as I can...is to try and contradict what's going on within the characters minds" [3]

This breaking up of organized sequence that ware describes as going from A to B leaves readers multiple ways of starting the page there being no single correct way to start.

 

Chris Ware draws influence from 40s-50's media, this is largely seen in his early work Quimby the mouse, as the titular character has been related to Krazy Kats, Ignatz Mouse [4] both in personality and stature influenced by the simple shapes and rubber hose anatomy. However we can also see the influence of commercials of that time period, making non linear sequences in Jimmy Corrigan.

  

[1] Jimmy Corrigan

Using Wares methods of adapting and re purposing older works I have taken the 1957 film "reform school girl" and used it's composition to create a page.

 

[5] Reform school girl film poster

References:

[1] Ware, C.

[2] The Guardian.

[3] FearNoArtChicago

[4] Arnold.A

[5] Reform School Girl.

Bibliography:
Arnold.A .[2003] A Mouse; A House; A Mystery.[Accessed 2nd December 2015] [Available from:] http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,477842,00.html
FearNoArtChicago (2012) Graphic Novelist, Chris Ware. [Accessed: 2nd December 2015] [Available from:]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4MOYCvgEmw 

The Guardian. (2015). The Last Saturday, by Chris Ware. [online]. [Accessed 2nd december 2015]. [Available from:] http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2014/sep/13/-sp-chris-ware-the-last-saturday-graphic-novel
Reform School Girl. (1957). [poster].[Accessed 2nd December] [Available from:] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_School_Girl 

Ware, C. (2000). Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Chicago. pantheon books.