Introduction​​​​​​​

This project requires me to draw the city using one of the techniques or strategies used by my chosen artist; along with the process of moving from hand drawings to digital production techniques, as a purpose to construct my own view or understanding of the city.

Fig. 1(A) Ware’s work on Building Stories

Fig. 1(B) Another work from Building Stories

Fig. 1(C) A strip from Ware’s Building Stories.

Ware’s works are often seen to display ‘melancholic, despondent, shamed figures, unhappy and ill at ease with contemporary life’ (Ball and Kuhlman 2010, p. 146). He is interested in the concept nostalgia, child pleasures, and forgotten artifacts that most of  his works would contain this theme. Moreover, Ware deeply appreciates the beautiful ornamented historic buildings and views the urban environment as a space that has waste its former historic buildings. He suggests that ‘rather than taking a building for granted, we should instead recognize its history and celebrate its role in the urban environment’  (Ball and Kuhlman 2010, p. 162). Furthermore, he believes that modern buildings do not elevate or inspire us, but only contain. Ware uses comic strip, each focuses on communicating mood and feeling rather than presenting a narrrative, to visualize the imagination, repetition and citation of the characters’ past; ‘gesturing a possible way out of melancholy through the shared experience of living in the built environment..’ (Ball and Kuhlman 2010, 149). Ware uses architecture as a way to bring the possibility of experiencing the past as a whole and the frustration of not being able to reconstruct modern ruins. According to Ball and Kuhlman (2010, p. 156), Chris Ware’s work shows ‘the melancholy realization that ruin is inevitable, yet finds in those ruins a renewed possibility for aesthetic experiences’. 

The figure 1(a) and (b) shows that his work is accompanied by comic strips with different shapes. The strip is placed together and form a certain layout and some are lead with arrows to direct where the scene is happening. A closer look to one of the strips (figure 1(C)) from the work shows that there is no narration in the story and overall, it is coloured without any shadings.

For my work, I used a pencil to sketch the draft, while the app Procreate and an Apple pencil for the final design.

Fig. 2(a) An unfinished quick sketch of my St. Vincent hospital

I was actually planning to draw St. Vincent hospital, a hospital near the city, but stopped halfway as I realised that this would not effectively show how I think about the city.

Fig. 2(B) A second draft of a student accommodation near Central.

Here, I aimed to draw Iglu, a student accommodation near Central station. I will be using this idea and refined it for the final design.

Fig. 2(C) Redrawing the sketch of the second draft in Procreate (done by just following the lines)

Fig. 2(D) the final design of my work

Unlike Ware, I do not view the city in terms of the buildings that are placed there. In my opinion, since city is a space most filled with people (if you compare this to the suburb areas)- the busiest space, there would be many things that are happening in that place at the same time. One building would contain different scenes, stories, moods, or experiences.

Figure 2(D) shows a student accommodation- here, there are three different things happening at the same time. The top floor displays a suicide scene committed by a student, the middle floor displays a student working, whereas the third floor displays students partying. All things are happening in the same building, yet they all show different atmosphere. 

I believe I have used one of the techniques from Ware’s which is ‘The mix of histories on a block of a city’. I also use comic strips to tell a story and they do not contain narrations as well as being constructed in a certain layout. They are also drawn with simple colours without any shadings.

Ball, M. D. & Kuhlman, B. M., 2010, The Comics of Chris Ware, electronic book, University Press of Mississippi, viewed 29 August 2019, <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uts/detail.action?docID=544069>.

Ware, C. c2012, Building Stories, New York, viewed 29 August 2019, <https://find.lib.uts.edu.au/search?N=0&Ntk=All&Ntx=matchallpartial&Ntt=building%20stories%20chris%20ware>.