Untitled

Woshibai is a comic and narrative illustration artist based in Shanghai, China. The artist tends to work in a simple, grayscale style, presenting wordless narratives that are often fantastical but grounded in the uncertainties and anxieties of real life.

(detail)

I love the way that the narratives that the artist comes up with fit so nicely with their style. The artist’s relatively pared-down, quiet drawing style fits nicely into the meditative stories that their illustrations tell. There’s an interesting mix of scope and perspective in each of these – from reading one of Woshibai’s comics, one gets the sense of both the importance of their own, small existence, and the vastness of the universe.

The artist’s use of a simple figure, featureless aside from a stylized face, as the actor in these narratives also enforces the universality of these narratives. By avoiding imposing any signifiers of character, the artist allows the viewer to project themselves into each scenario.

Earth (detail)