Radiant Comics

Sometimes I am without motivation to make any artwork. I didn’t use the word inspiration right there because I think that’s a totally different thing. Inspiration is rare. It’s light a lightbulb going off in your head as if you were in a cartoon. It’s an idea that sets a process into motion. But if you’re waiting on inspiration then you might be in for a long wait. It’s a pleasant experience when it happens but most of the time you just have to buckle down and get things done. That’s where motivation come into play.

Motivation is the ability to look into the future, even if only a few minutes into the future, and see the place you want to be and decide to go there. It could be that the future is two hours later with a finished drawing. Or it could be a week later with a finished painting. It’s a tricky thing. Lately I’ve not been able to see a week into the future and therefore haven’t been doing any painting. Life can be like that.

Today I couldn’t even see a hour into the future. No motivation. In order to cure this malaise I decided to look through my drawer of dead end drawings. Underneath my drawing board I attached two drawers for storing drawings. The one on the left is for recently finished drawings. Ones that I moved onto the ink or color stage of. Since they’re working drawings and I’ve gone onto the next stage of work I don’t need them anymore. But if something goes wrong I need them handy so I don’t tuck them away in an out of the way place. That comes later.

The drawer on the right is full of dead end drawings. I often do drawings in batches. I’ll work up four or five six by nine inch pencil drawings to be used as the basis for prints, paintings, or faux comic book covers. Not all of those drawings become something. Often one or two of them don’t hold my interest after I finish them. Sometimes I burn out on whatever plan I had for them. So into the drawer they go. They’re not bad but they no longer motivate me.

I don’t think I’ve opened the dead end drawer in months. I guess I’ve been motivated but today that motivation came to an end. So I opened the drawer to look through the drawings to try and find something to do. It’s odd but I had forgotten how many drawings were in there. There was at least fifty of them in various sizes. Some have been there for years. They were interesting to look through and a bunch of them caught my eye but what I settled on was four drawings.

My “On The Rough” series is a bunch of drawings that I make on five by seven inch watercolor paper. The name comes from the fact that the paper is so rough as to be almost unusable. I bought a bunch of the paper ages ago and then it sat around for a year until I figured out I could make ink drawings on it with my busted brush technique. First I draw in black ink and then add some color inks on top of that.

I make my “On The Rough” drawings in batches. That way I can keep working as I wait for the color inks (or watercolor) to dry. As the ink dries I grab another. That’s why there were four unfinished OTRs. Each one had the black ink drawing done but no color. I can’t remember when I made these or why I didn’t finish them. Besides these ones I don’t think I’ve ever left any of these unfinished for very long.

It was slow going finishing the color on the four drawings. In the long run I don’t think it took very long but I had to take a bunch of breaks as I as working. It took me a while to find my groove. In the end I even added some more black ink to the drawings. They came out fine. After I finish them the last thing I have to do is sign and date them on the back. That and number them. I usually name my stuff but sometimes with a series of drawings the name is the name of the series and a number.

I have places that I keep things in. For my art it’s mostly in boxes and on shelves so I went over to where my “On The Rough” drawings are kept to pull them out. Then I got distracted by how messy things were. I had piled stuff on top of the box and half of it could be thrown out and half of it moved to its own spot. That lead me to clean up even more stuff around that one box. Then I cleaned a closet to find a place to put a bit of the stuff I was moving. An hour and a half later I finally pulled out the box to see what number I should use on the drawings.

The number was a hundred and nineteen. That’s a lot of drawings. I don’t always reach such a high number for an art series but here I did. Still that number wasn’t the part that caught my attention. That honor belonged to the date of the last drawing. It was in March of 2016. Has it really been two years since I finished any drawings like this? Yes, it had been and I hadn’t really noticed.

I have a vague memory of not finishing these drawings because I was kind of bored of the process. I don’t know if that’s a real memory or not but it sounds like what must have happened. I was looking for motivation one day and decided to do some OTR drawings. I pulled out the paper and made four ink drawings. Then I lost my motivation. I could see no reason to finish them. They probably sat on my drawing table for months before I finally put them in the dead end drawer and forgot about them. And now, all this time later, the motivation finally came. Better late than never.

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comics.

Check them all out here:

As an artist I’m not particularly skilled at likenesses. What’s a likeness you ask? That’s when an artist draws a specific person so it looks like that person. If someone draws a picture of John Wayne it is immediately recognizable as John Wayne. That’s a skill that artists posses in varying degrees. Some have a natural talent for it but in the end it takes practice and it’s not a skill I practice much.

There are two ways to capture a likeness. One is by looking at the person as you draw. The person poses for you. This is the classic artistic method that goes back to the beginning of drawing. You see the person and you draw the person. Sure there are various tips and tricks in drawing a person but in the end it’s drawing from life. The second way is to draw from a photograph of the person. This is by far the more common way these days as photographs are easy to find or to make. It’s a lot easier to find a photo than to find a live model.

Drawing from a photo can be further broken down into two methods of working. One is to just look at the photo and draw from what you see (using a grid over the photo would be a variation on this) and the other is to drop a piece of paper on top of the photo and draw right over the top of it. Though you have to make sure you draw. Don’t trace. There is a difference. Tracing leads to an amateur job. This drawing method can also be done digitally.

I bring this subject up because I was working on some likenesses this week. I decided I wanted to make some cartoon art cards of the cast of the TV show “Friends.” Cartoon art cards are the art cards on which I draw a character’s face and a word balloon and then write and letter something for the word balloon. I usually make up the faces or sometimes draw known super heroes but this time I wanted something different. I wanted some likenesses.

This isn’t even the first time I tried to draw the cast of “Friends” as cartoon art cards. Last year I attempted the same thing and failed. I picked an episode of “Friends” and took screen shots of the various characters to draw from. It was season seven episode five. I tried the drawing right on top of the photo method and failed miserably. Nothing came out right. It all looked terrible and I abandoned the cards. That’s never fun.

This time I decided to give it a try but not draw over the photos. I’d look at the photo and then draw. I’d try to capture a caricature or likeness without copying the photo. This method can be even harder but I gave it a try. Keep in mind the drawing is also very small. An art card is only 2.5×3.5 inches and there is a word balloon on top. That means the face is only about an inch and a half tall. That is a really small face in which to capture a likeness. Especially of such well known faces.

I remember being told in my early 20s that I had a talent for simplicity. I didn’t like that idea very much. Complexity is much more praised in the world of drawing and it took me a long time to embrace my talent for simplicity. Simple is also very hard. When drawing something with very few lines there is not any room for error. If I were to define a face with a thousand lines I could be off with fifty of them and no one would ever know. They blend right in. But if I try to draw a face with thirty lines I can’t be off with any of them. They all count. If one or two are wrong they stand out. There is no place for them to hide. So attempting to do likenesses with simple drawings is a tough gig. That’s why I failed the first time.

Of the six cards I drew I think Phoebe came out the best. I think that might be because her hair in this episode was so distinctive. I captured her face shape fairly well and her eyes are good but her nose and mouth are pretty generic. There is no way they really can be anything else. They are so small.

I think Monica is also okay but only because of her hair. She has long, straight, jet black hair in this episode and it’s pretty distinctive. I only did okay in capturing the shape of her face and I missed a bit with her eyes. But they’re only a sixteenth of an inch high so I did what I could.

Rachel’s hair is also okay but her face is generic. I didn’t manage to capture the quality of her jawline or her eyes and nose but it’s still an okay little drawing. In context I know it’s Rachel but if I saw it as an individual drawing I might not get who she is. I like the drawing though.

Chandler came out the most like a caricature. Maybe it’s the glasses but he looks like a cartoon version of Chandler more than the others do. He might be able to guest star on an episode of Scooby-Doo. I’m not sure if I want them all to go in this direction or not but I like this Chandler.

Ross is solid. His sticking up hair is close but just misses by a little bit. I think I captured something with his eyes though. Like Rachel he works in context but maybe not on his own. Room for improvement here.

Joey was the most trouble. I couldn’t get him at all through three tries. The one I show here works but I had to do it by the “Draw over a picture” method. No matter how matter how much I tried I couldn’t capture his look. I like the way his hair came out here but previously I couldn’t capture it at all. My first three Joeys looked nothing like him. Even in context he didn’t read as Joey. It was really frustrating and I gave up twice before switching methods. I’m much happier with this one.

Overall these likenesses, except for the first three Joeys, went pretty well. I’m putting them up for sale on my Etsy page and maybe someone will buy them. If they do I might do some more from another episode. We’ll see.

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got six new comics.

Check them all out here:

I finally stared watching movies again. Why did I stop watching movies? I’m not exactly sure but the short explanation is that they got too long for me. Or that I lost the patience to sit still that long. It’s really not about the movies it’s about me. I can’t sit down and concentrate on a movie for as long as I used to be able to.

I can still watch TV but I’m not a TV binge watcher. One TV show is either 42 or 22 minutes long without commercials. I usually watch between an hour and a half and two hours of TV a night before I go to bed. It relaxes me and calms me down. Otherwise I get tired and wired. That’s how I describe my state of being when I’m still wide awake and want to get things done but my concentration is shot for the day and I have no energy left to actually do anything but be restless and maybe pace. It’s like I want to draw but can’t anymore. Sitting down and relaxing is what I should do because tomorrow is another day but it’s not always easy to do without the distraction of entertainment.

Also with TV I can stop between shows and brush my teeth, get a drink, or whatever. I can’t do that with a movie because I’d miss parts. Movies demand your attention all the way through for the full two hours. I don’t seem to have that in me very often anymore. I’ve watched a few full movies over the last couple of months. I finally caught The Guardians of The Galaxy Volume Two and enjoyed that one plus I watched the two John Wick movies which were good but that was about it for the winter. Maybe there were a couple of more in there that I’m forgetting right now but not a whole lot more.

Meanwhile over this past weekend, plus a couple of days, I’ve watched three movies. What’s the difference you ask? I finally decided to not watch the movies all the way through at once. Y’see, I always have twenty minutes to half an hour to watch something. I do my exercises after diner and usually have on a TV show while I do them. Since I stand and work I sometimes need twenty minutes to sit in a chair and rest. I can put something on then too. I’ve run out of or gotten bored with half an hour TV shows so why not put a movie on? I can always catch the rest of it later. That’s become my attitude.

A second factor is that I can also watch the movie on my iPad. Not always but sometimes. As easy as it is to watch a movie on my TV occasionally it seems like too much effort. I have to turn on the TV, turn on the stereo, wait for the TV to boot up and connect to my wireless network, and then pick something to watch. It’s not like the process takes more than a minute or four but opening up my iPad and launching a movie watching app takes seconds.

It’s a different experience watching a movie on an iPad. One of the good things about it is that the picture is crystal clear and taken in at a glance. I know most film makers want you to see their movies on the big screen but with a little screen it’s easier to see the composition. I’ve found that sometimes scenes can look prettier on the small screen because of that. Plus there is an intimacy when holding an iPad in your hands and watching something. Of course that’s a drawback too. You have to hold the iPad and that gets tiring after a while. It’s a good thing I don’t do it for that long.

One more thing that has annoyed me about watching movies is the sound. I’ve got a good sound system hooked up to my TV so that’s not the problem. The problem is that I like to watch action movies. They have lots of gunfire and explosions. The dialog happens at one level of volume and then that’s cranked up for the action scenes. I know that’s the way the film makers want it but I’m always turning the volume down during the action scenes. I don’t need super-loud gunfire, tires screeching, or explosions in my movies. It doesn’t help me instead it takes me out of the movie. Since TV shows have less of a budget there seems to be less of that super-loud noise. At least when I’m watching on my iPad the volume isn’t so loud.

What movies did I watch this weekend? Let me tell you. The first was Den of Thieves. I think that one was over two hours long and I watched in in three or four pieces. It was pretty good. It was a caper film that we got to see from the point of view of both the police and the criminals. Lot’s of characters and lots of action plus it kept me guessing. There was also a lot of moral grey area so I wasn’t sure who I was rooting for. Did I want the criminals to succeed or not? I think that was handled well.

The second movie was The Commuter. Another action movie that takes place on the Metro North train that runs between Cold Spring and Grand Central Terminal. It was also a pretty good. It starred Liam Neeson as an ex-police officer caught in an impossible situation on his commute home as evildoers force him to find a hidden person on the train. Good stuff with lots of tension. Even with breaks in between scenes.

The third and final movie was The Accountant. Yet another action movie with Ben Affleck as an accountant who has really good combat skills that come in handy when some rich criminal wants him dead. It had and interesting and unusual climax as Affleck squared off against the final end-battle boss. Sometimes these action movies are very much like video games.

So there you go. Half an hour at a time is the way I like my movies now. Just enough time until I want to get up and move around a bit.