Chris Ware

Chris Ware is an illustrator cartoonist, with a very unique style. I'm not sure if I particularly like his style of work, but I do find it interesting.

To begin with I looked at Wares Quimby the Mouse(1). I found this piece very confusing and unusual as its not how you would usually read and convey a comic.

"Although Ware’s graphic novels always comprise a linear narrative, they are often interrupted by pages with quite unusual layouts, mostly complex patterns of panels connected by arrows that allow us to switch from one sequence to another."(2)  

I decided to try and make a series of events from the title 'I'm so bored, how can I get out of here?'. You can see this in the top left corner, with the three different outcomes. I tried to recreate Chris Wares style by having a series of stories that are linked with arrows, some with different outcomes as well. And then I tried to create another series of stories from 'What should I do today?' This time I linked the two stories so they overlap. 









Then I looked at another piece called Big Tex (3). This methodology is that it is one overall image but the square panels show different times. So as you can see, some panels show it in the past, and they show the scene in different seasons. The way he explores time in his comics is very different, as there is no rule that says every panel has to be seconds after the first one. "He controls every aspect of the page, how the story is told, and how the story is read."(4) This is something Chris Ware is particularly good at, and it gives this whole page a completely different meaning.  

I attempted to do this in my own way. I drew a park scene, with a house in the corner which shows it in different time frames, one being derelict and run down, the same as Chris Ware's. I also explored his use of seasons, and putting people in the scene in a certain time period. I wanted to use some muted colours and some bright colours like Ware did, but i think by using pencils it didn't emphasise this as much as I wanted, although you can still clearly see the different seasons.

I really like the simplicity and the certain almost robotic style to the way Ware draws people, and so i wanted to try and replicate this. I found his self portrait(5) seen above, and thought this was a good really stripped back version of his other drawings. I decided to use his methodology to try and create my own self portrait. 

I drew myself with his techniques, with the round eyes and nose, and the particular head shapes. As his has many personal features of himself like the glasses,hair and wrinkles, I decided to add in certain aspects of myself. I added my eyeliner I always have, and my piercings which I think help to give it the obvious look that it is me.

I also looked into how all his work has a depressive feel about it. And so I drew my self  portrait with how depression can effect you (not being able to talk to people, feeling like your in darkness etc). Again, I showed this with his use of arrows and small images displayed around.

Within his 'book' "Building Stories", Chris Ware showed multiple small comic strips about the everyday lives of the residents of the building. Some of these are these wordless strips, were just something small happens, like the image above. (6) He uses these short comic strips to try to recreate our little memories in the small day to day things that happen in our lives. (7)

I then tried this in my own way, using another every day task; going for a drink and a fag. I used the same layout that Chris Ware uses. I drew someone walking over to the bench in the first two panels, with the same view, and then showed her putting the fag and drink down in the last two zoomed in panels. I used the same block colouring, and the same angles. 

I think I used a good similar simple action to recreate this methodology. 

References 

(1) Chris Ware, Quimby the Mouse

(2) Bartual, R.(2012) p48

(3) Chris Ware, Big Tex

(4) Stamp, J.(2012)

(5) Chris Ware, Self Portrait

(6) Chris Ware, Building Stories

(7) Dueben, A.(2012)

Bibliography

Bartual, R. (2012) Towards a panoptical representation of time and memory: Chris Ware, Marcel Proust and Henri Bergson's "Pure Duration", Scandinavian journal of comic art, VOL 1:1 (Spring 2012) Available at: http://sjoca.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/SJoCA-1-1-Article-Bartual.pdf (Accessed: 3 November 2015). 

Dueben, A. (2012) Chris Ware explores ‘building stories’ , Comic book resources . Available at: comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42098#storyContinued (Accessed: 3 November 2015).

Murray , N. (2003) Chris Ware: Quimby the Mouse, Avclub. Available at: Avclub.com/review/Chris-ware-iquimby-the-mousei-5527 (Accessed: 3 November 2015).

Stamp, J. (2012) Designing lives and building stories, Chris Ware’s comic book epic , Smithsonianmag.com. Available at: smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/designing-lives-and-building-stories-chris-wares-comic-book-epic-81172688/?no-ist (Accessed: 3 November 2015).