Renowned Painter Aron Wiesenfeld Collects His Post-it Note Drawings in New Book, Playtime

The artwork of Aron Wiesenfeld has been featured in 15 solo exhibitions and captured the attention of fans around the world, including Oscar Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro and legendary cartoonists including Mike Mignola, Jim Lee and Kevin Eastmen. Wiesenfeld’s striking, large scale paintings are renowned for their dreamlike quality, often featuring evocative and solitary figures, whose presence suggests a general air of melancholy, isolation, and of leaving innocence behind. Before Wiesenfeld was an accomplished and acclaimed fine artist, he was a comic book artist whose brilliant art for Marvel’s Deathblow/Wolverine comic book earned him an Eisner Award nomination and his eye-catching comic book covers helped set the tone for the seminal series Y: The Last Man. Now the artist is once again experimenting with a new storytelling format with Playtime: The Post-It Note Drawings, a complete collection of Wiesenfeld’s ink drawings on Post-it notes, which have never before been published.

The book will spotlight roughly 100 pages of drawings which will be interspersed with short writings or poems. The 120-page deluxe hardcover is being published via Kickstarter. “I think of these small drawings like short stories, they are based on inspiration that I found in daily life,” said Wiesenfeld. “My hope is that you will browse through it on a rainy day, and be inspired too.”

Wiesenfeld traditionally works in oil paint and charcoal drawing. His technique draws upon the traditions of master painters from history, though his subject matter is decidedly modern. Sometimes described as “liminal”, his young subjects are often placed in the ignored in-between places on the outskirts of cities. These settings are echoed by an unconscious “in-betweenness” in the young protagonists, who are adrift, indecisive, in peril, or in search of something.

Playtime: The Post-It Note Drawings captures a contemporary master, experimenting with form and materials and rejoicing in the act of play.

“It’s always good to put limitations on yourself,” explains Wiesenfeld. “In this series I only allowed myself to use black pens on a 3×3-inch square of yellow paper. It became a challenge to see if I could capture some of the key elements I love in large oil paintings: mood, atmosphere, time of day, weather conditions, character, and story. I wasn’t always successful, but was often pleasantly surprised with the results anyway. When you see your lines blown up, every quiver of the hand is captured there. No falseness, or flourishes of style are even possible, it’s just too small for any of that. The results always felt ‘real’ to me. One of my heroes is Gustave Doré, who, constrained by the printing limitations of his time, was able to tell visual stories that felt like paintings, but limited to only using black and white engraving lines.”

Fans can support Playtime on Kickstarter.
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Al Mega

I'm Al Mega the CEO of Comic Crusaders, CEO of the Undercover Capes Podcast Network, CEO of Geekery Magazine & Owner of Splintered Press (coming soon). I'm a fan of comics, cartoons and old school video games. Make sure to check out our podcasts/vidcasts and more!