Wytches #2: Matt Hollingsworth has a Post-Impressionistic Twitter Account

      In the second instalment of Wytches, Matt Hollingsworth’s colouring techniques prove to be even more active than in the first issue. His colour splashes that overlap and connect multiple panels and pages creates a braiding effect that spans across pages. Thierry Groensteen in The System of Comics notes how using images, words, or themes through patterns of repetition within the limits of restricted and general arthrology (a single page or an entire series) can create visual cues to the reader that help better their understanding of the story as a whole, and of how comics can be read on multiple levels (146-7). Hollingsworth is able to relay subtle information about the feelings being conveyed – mainly, the fear and horror – through his colouring techniques.

     As if the pages of Wytches #2 were not beautiful enough, I found Matt Hollingsworth’s Twitter page (https://twitter.com/MDHollingsworth). On his page, Hollingsworth, who has done the colour for the last two issues of Wytches, posts many step by step photo montages showing how the images in the comic books go from black lines to completely finished in full colour. He lists Van Gogh, a post-impressionist painter, as one of his colour inspirations – which is interesting since both Van Gogh and Hollingsworth rely on colour to convey emotion. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website describes the post-impressionist movement as “a group of young painters [that] sought independent artistic styles for expressing emotions rather than simply optical impressions, concentrating on themes of deeper symbolism”. The lines, provided by Jock, are the foundation for Hollingsworth's colouring. From his Twitter feed it's possible to see the different layers and techniques to get the effect the reader sees in the book. He posts many pictures from what he calls his ‘splatter library’ - canvases on which he's sprayed watercolour acrylic paint splatters. He then goes on to use these paint splatters in his illustrations as a layer in Photoshop. He achieves the look he wants with rust and acrylic paints along with Photoshop colour gradients, as seen in the photographs.  His colouring techniques are purposefully messy in order to match the scratchy lines of Jock's ink drawings and complete the comic's overall horrific feel. The art style the artists combine to create is an important factor that influences the readers' reading experience of Wytches.

     One way in which Hollingsworth is able to show his artistic abilities is through the visualization of otherwise solely tactile aspects of life. This is evident on page 4 (to the left) where the electric shock Charlie experiences in the very last panel at the bottom of the page. Even though the quick shock does not occur until this last panel, the blue colour splash emanating from the screw driver is not limited to that panel. The same colouring is spread out very noticeably over the tip of the screw driver in the previous panel, moments before the shock occurs. In this way, the blue, translucent pain splatters act as not only a form of visualizing the electricity, but also as foreshadowing of the shock to come. 

     Page 15 (to the right) is another page that is noticeably heavy in Hollingsworth's colouring techniques. Blues and reds on this page act as representations of the two different places in time and space that overlap in Sailor's mind (and body). In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud speaks not only of how art style affects the reader, but also how the background images (or, in this case, also the foreground colours) "can produce an almost physiological effect in the viewer" and that "a picture can evoke an emotional or sensual response in the viewer [that] is vital to the art of comics" (132, 121). The blues represent the now: Sailor swimming in her school's pool. On the other hand, the reds on the page represent something more complicated; it is not know whether or not the forest and wytches depicted are images from the past or in the present. Either way, the reds of the wytches in the forest are invading Sailor in the present by physically growing out of the bite on her neck which she sustains at the end of the previous issue. Also, not only does the growing of the so-called 'thing' on her neck create a connection between her and the wytches, but also the blue and red paint splatters that overlap all the panels on the page. Groensteen also points out how "chromatically differentiated series" of images work to give hints about the story indirectly (152).

   Without the hard work Hollingsworth displays to his Twitter followers through step by step images showing his colouring techniques, readers could only infer how the images they see in comics are created. Moreover, seeing the colourist's intentions behind the work and by studying the actual colours, mediums, and techniques, the readers can gain a deeper understanding of the comic at hand.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poim/hd_poim.htm