Radiant Comics

Greetings Earthling

Painting is a lot harder physically on me than I remember. I guess that’s me getting older. I also mean a specific type of painting. They way I paint acrylic or oil on big canvases. First of all I always work standing up. I have my computer at standing height, my drawing table at standing height, and my easel at standing height, So I’m used to standing all day. That is not a problem. I prefer it to sitting all day.

When I make my Big Ink Drawings I do them on the same easel at nearly the same size as my paintings. The drawings are on 22×30 inch pieces of paper and my current painting is on a 24×36 inch stretched canvas. So it’s not the size. I think the difference is in the motions I make.

When I’m drawing a big ink drawing I’m moving all over the place. Sometimes I’m using a brush, sometimes a pen, and sometimes a marker. Plus I have at least two brushes that I switch between and four pens. With all those different tools come changes in posture and the movements of my arm. Using a marker with a straight edge is a completely different motion than using a brush and ink freehand.

When I’m painting my large paintings I’m using two brushes for a lot of it. A half inch wide flat bristle brush and a pointed #3 watercolor brush. Those two brushes make up about 90% of the brush strokes on the painting and I’m using a similar motion with both of them. That seems to be the fatiguing part.

I stand in front of the canvas with my hand about a foot away from my body and make small brush strokes. Each stroke is a fraction of an inch up to about an inch long. I actually change the angle of my arm at the shoulder every so often as I move the paint in different directions.

Most of my paintings have a holding line in them much like a cartoon. So I start them the same. I transfer whatever drawing that I have prepared onto the canvas (I grid it up) and then paint the line of the drawing with a brush in either purple or black paint. This part is similar to one of my Big Ink Drawings. With this painting (“Greetings Earthling”) I even used acrylic ink instead of paint. That was first time I did that. I figured I usually use watered down acrylic paint so I may as well use one of these acrylic inks that I bought recently. It worked well.

The lines that make up the initial painted line drawing actually aren’t very important. There is a long way to go on the painting and I have to put a lot of paint on the canvas around the lines. I even go back into the painting near the end and strengthen the lines and add even more lines to the drawing. So I try not to get too caught up in if the initial line drawing looks good or bad. It just has to be functional in the beginning.

With this type of painting I lay down a lot of areas of flat color. The paint itself isn’t really flat as I like to use the brush strokes to create texture. I originally started this type of painting way back in 1986 when I was a painting student. One of my teachers, Nick Marsicano, told me that I should look at Mondrian paintings and see how he laid down areas of paint and line. He also told me specifically to look at how Mondrian would often push the paint up to the line to create an edge. This is what I do too.

When I lay down my large areas of color and make them meet the line I use the half inch flat bristle brush to put paint right next to the line but not up against it. I put a bead of paint about a quarter of an inch away from the edge of the line. Then I move the brush in my hand so it’s facing the line and push the paint up to the line and then draw the brush away from the line. So it’s push and then pull. This creates the edge I’m looking for and makes the line look as if it were cut out of the paint.

For smaller areas of paint I do nearly the same thing but with the smaller painted watercolor brush. It doesn’t leave behind the same nice texture as the bristle brush since its hairs are softer but for small areas that the bigger brush can’t tackle without messing things up the pointed brush is essential. Instead of pushing the bead of paint up to the line with the front of the brush I use the side. So I draw the brush down and push the paint up to the edge. Then I pull outward with the pointed brush or grab the flat one if there is room. Sometimes with the flat brush there is room enough to pull but not push the paint.

It was a Thursday that was a long day. I started at about 7:30 in the morning and didn’t finish painting until five at night. In my younger days this was normal for me. I would do it for days if not weeks on end. I paced myself though. I stopped for lunch and sit down breaks every now and then. As I approach 55 I found myself having to take even more frequent breaks.

As well as the physical aspect of painting it takes a sort of meditative attitude to do this kind of painting. Putting down the same color paint with specific brush strokes going in specific directions takes a lot of concentration and is dull both at the same time. At times I have to let my mind wander and at other times I have to focus on just the stroke as I clear my mind of all other thoughts.

With this painting I found both the mental and physical aspect of it tiring. I had to take more frequent brakes than I usually do because I could feel myself tiring out. I’d work for fifteen to twenty minutes and then take a break for ten. I used to go for an hour or two without a break. Life changes.

Though I haven’t finished with this painting yet I’m happy with it. I’ve got the bulk of the work done. All the flat color is in and now I have to rework the line and add even more lines, brush strokes, and color to the painting. This is the most fun part and though it takes a lot of concentration the physical aspect of it is easier. I’m looking forward to easier.

“Greetings Earthling”

I’m going to have to start at the beginning. That is the conclusion I’ve come to. It’s not a surprising conclusion at the moment but it’s taken me a couple of weeks to get here. I just recently wrote a blog on trying to paint. I still haven’t gotten that first painting started. I’ve been putting it off for whatever reason. I’m not a procrastinator so this is strange territory for me.

So I’m starting form the beginning. Recently my beginning point for making Big Ink Drawings, Color Ink Drawings, and Dreams of Things Covers has been different than usual. I’ve been recycling and redrawing images that I’ve made over the years. Instead of my starting point being a blank piece of paper or a thumbnail image from my sketchbook it’s been looking through scans of old drawing to see if anything catches my eye. That’s what I’ve been doing to try and start this painting. It hasn’t worked.

I did find a drawing that I used for one of my ‘Red Mary” covers that I thought I wanted to make a painting out of. I even redrew it in a new 24×36 inch proportion to fit the painting. It’s a good drawing. I like it. But it didn’t get me motivated past the color sketch stage so far. I didn’t even like the color sketch very much. The whole thing needs more work but I had nothing else on deck.

I’ve been saying to myself “Let’s get this started” over the last few days. My thinking is that if I can get the painting under way than I can get it finished. That how it usually works for me. But I couldn’t get it under way. It always seems like too much of a task.

Finally this morning I decided to start at the beginning. I put aside that “Red Mary” drawing and asked myself what I wanted to paint. Turns out I want to paint a face. I often want to work with faces. The next question was, “Who’s face?”. I had no answer to that question.

Sometimes I like to do portraits but that really takes inspiration. I have to see a person or picture of a person and like their face enough to want to draw it. That happens sometimes. But with me that doesn’t happen often. Inspiration can’t be counted on to be regular.

More often than not the faces I draw come out of my head and they are far from reality. I like to use shapes and lines in a simple way to build faces. There is more graphic design than portraiture in most of my faces. Eyes become circles and dots, noses are a few squiggly lines, and mouths are triangles and curves. It all works as a face because our minds see faces in patterns.

That’s when I dug out my inkbook. That’s my regular sketchbook that I make small thumbnail ink drawings in. I like to use ink at this stage because it’s all about getting visual ideas down on paper. Using a pencil would make me want to use an eraser too. I’d want the pencil drawing to be perfect. Perfectionism can get in the way of creativity. Using ink at this point eliminates my tendency to try and make thumbnail drawings perfect.

In my inkbook I made nine small face drawings on a page. I drew a box in the top left corner, drew a face in it, drew two boxes to fill up the row, and drew two faces in them. I then repeated that for two more rows. Nine faces, 3×3, on a piece of paper in a 5.5×8.5 inch sketchbook. That’s how I usually fill up my inkbook pages but not always with faces.

It was the face in the middle that I liked. Number five. I remembered a face I had drawn twenty years ago that I liked and drew one similar to it. I think that twenty year old face is just a sketch on a small piece of paper that I never made into anything but it somehow came into my mind. It’s a simple drawing with only dots for eyes, a line for a nose, and two lines for a mouth.

The composition of the face is what makes this one for me. Usually a face composition should have the top of the head up near the top of the paper. That’s how mine mostly are. But this one has a lot of air above the head and an asterisk above the person’s head. It’s cartoon visual language for us interrupting the person and his or her (I’m not sure which yet) thoughts stop suddenly. I find that interesting and amusing.

The next thing I have to do is to make a real drawing out of my thumbnail drawing. That’s not always an easy task. Keeping the charm and spontaneity of a sketch takes thought and practice. I already scanned in the inkbook page and now I’ll print it out on a 6×9 inch piece of Bristol board (paper) and draw right on my printed out sketch. The blown up sketch becomes my underdrawing.

I still have to do that drawing. I haven’t even printed it out yet but I’m confident that the painting is more under way than it has been for a month. I still want to make that “Red Mary” painting that I have a drawing for but it’s going to take more thought. Maybe it’ll be painting #2 this summer.

One more thing about this painting. For my Big Ink Drawings I’ve been transferring the drawing to the paper using a large printout of the sketch (taped together 8.5×11 inch paper as the drawing was printed out in pieces) and graphite paper.

With a painting I can’t use the graphite paper. It doesn’t work that well on stretched canvas. So I’m going to have to grid up the drawing. That process takes longer and is harder. I think that’s kept me from working on the painting too. I haven’t wanted to grid up the complex “Red Mary” drawing. The face one is simpler and I’m looking forward to gridding it up. I think I’ll do that early this week.

I’ve done it. I’ve finished setting up my new Mac Mini computer. It took me the better part of three days to set things up. There was the physical setup and then there was the digital setup. They both took longer than expected. That’s life for you.

The first thing I set up was a mount for the mini. I set that up before the computer even arrived. I screwed in the mount under a shelf that sits behind my monitor. It’s a shelf that consists of two brackets and a four foot piece of 1×8 pine. The pine was slightly bowed in the middle so I thought it best to add a third bracket before screwing in the mount. My new computer doesn’t need a bow in it.

I took the books off the shelf, unscrewed the shelf from the brackets (made easier by my new cordless drill), attached the Mini mount to the bottom of the shelf, attached the center bracket to the wall, put the shelf in place, screwed the shelf to the brackets, and then put the books back.

It was only then that I realized I made a mistake. I put the front of the mount facing out and the back against the wall. Except I would have to plug things into the back of the computer so it couldn’t be against the wall. I had to take everything down again, turn the mount sideways, and put everything back in place. At least it was all easier the second time. My new cordless drill was a big help too.

When the Mac Mini came I put it on top of my drawing table with my old monitor and hooked them up. I decided to use that space to get everything ready before I cleared out my old Mac Tower. The first thing I tried to do was to use Migration Assistant to transfer things to the new computer. But I didn’t have the right wire. I did have two new USB hard drive docks so I pulled my main drive out of the old computer, stuck it in a dock, plugged it into the mini, and I was ready to go. I only transferred over settings and applications so it just took a couple of hours. All my work was staying on my old hard drives.

After I did the initial digital setup I decided to do the physical setup. This took half a day. That tower has been sitting there for 13 years with about 20 peripherals hooked up to it. I had to move almost everything, pull a lot of wires, and clean up a ton of dust. I had the tower on top of a wooden platform that I built for airflow. There were also things on top of the tower. I had to add wood to the top of the platform so I could set stuff on it now. It used to have an open top.

I had a digital video converter box and a VCR hooked up to my old computer and these won’t work with the new one. I had to move those out to the garage but at least that cleared up some space. My two big scanners and my printer stayed in their places so at least they weren’t a problem.

After I moved my old tower out I slid the Mac Mini into its mount and I was ready to go. It took me another half a day to get all my peripherals hooked up and in place. I took the time to label all the power cords and USB cords so that I could easily see what was plugged in where.

I have one surge protector with ten outlets in it and a second one with eight outlets and I’m still a plug or two short. I bought two USB hubs, a ten and seven port plug and they are already filled. I needed USB plugs for three scanners, a printer, two hard drive docks (they fit the four hard drives that I had in my tower), two external hard drives, a keyboard, a tablet, speakers, USB to my monitor, backup hard drive, a single hard drive dock, an iPad cord, and a general non-Apple charging cord. I’m going to need a third hub.

All of that was time consuming and tiring but it went went pretty smoothly. After that it was a matter of getting all the software set up. My old OS was at least three systems behind so even though I used Migration Assistant there were a lot of settings and preferences that didn’t transfer over. Most of them I’d say. One of the things they don’t tell you about getting a new computer is that it takes a long time to get everything set up so that you can do all the stuff you could already do on your old computer.

I had to delete programs, install programs, and dig out old passwords. I was sad that some stuff that I’ve used for years would never run again. Like that VCR and DV box. I had the Firewire to USB3 adaptors I needed but no software to run it. I also had to remove the tablet I’ve been using for 20 years and replace it with a new (and smaller) one. That’s going to take some getting used to.

The most annoying thing that I had trouble with was my local network and file sharing. I share files between my laptop, desktop, and iPad all the time. I have an app for it on the iPad and the software is built right into the OS of the laptop. If I want a file off one of my desktop’s hard drives I call it up over the local network and copy away. Except when I tried to do that with the Mini I always got errors. It was frustrating.

I searched the internet for a couple of hours, tried various things, and met only with failure. That was until I finally found the answer. Someone said that I have to open up my file sharing preferences, turn off file sharing (which is just clicking a digital button), wait a few seconds, and then turn it back on. That worked. I couldn’t believe my brand new Mac Mini was working like an old lawnmower. Prime it, pull the cord halfway, prime it again, tap the spark plug, and then pull the cord all the way to start it. I was glad I got it working but boy was it a waste of time.

I’m finally replacing my 13 year old computer. It’s a Mac Tower that I bought back in 2008. It was their bottom of the line back then and cost me $3000. I’d like to buy a new Mac Tower but the bottom of the line for those is now over $5500. There is no way I can afford that. So I’ve been scoping out what to buy for months now and finally ordered a Mac Mini.

I’m an artist and a graphic designer. A Photoshop guy. It used to be that the Mac Towers were built for guys like me but not anymore. Now they’re built for people who process video. They’re built and priced for Hollywood studios. That’s not me for sure.

Most of my artist/graphic designer friends use laptops these days. They all seem to prefer the convenience of them but I don’t. I have a laptop (it’s from 2012) and am using it to write this piece but it’s not my main computer. I have so many peripherals hooked up to my desktop that I prefer everything to be stationary. Besides to replace this laptop is going to cost me about $3000. I don’t have that money to spend right now.

The Mac Mini starts out at around $850 but I knew that the bottom of the line one wouldn’t bee good enough for me. So I added more RAM (16 gigs total) and a bigger hard drive (1 TB total) and the price went up to $1200. That was my bottom line number but I knew it was going to cost me even more than that.

My old Mac Tower is great because it has four hard drive bays. I have four hard drives in these bays: an 8 TB hard drive, a four TB HD and two 2 TB HDs. I have to hook those up to my new computer or it would be useless to me. So I had to order USB hard drive docks to hook them all up. I found some docks that would hold two hard drives each for $40. That’s $80 more on my total.

The next thing I’d need would be USB hubs to hook up all of my peripherals. I have a printer, three scanners, speakers, two external hard drives, and probably a few other things I’m forgetting. I found a ten port USB3 hub for $40. I figured I’d also use the old USB2 hub that I have hooked up right now too but then I thought better of it. USB can be twitchy and cause weird problems so after a few days of thinking on it I ordered a seven port USB3 hub with a built in SD and Mini SD card reader. Another $40.

For another $200 I added on the “Pro Apps Bundle for Education.” That’s Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. Apple’s professional video and music editing programs. I really waffled back and forth on this one because that’s a lot of money for programs I don’t immediately need. But I want to learn them ( I already know iMovie and Garage Band their consumer versions) and this was the only chance I walk have to buy them for half their normal price. So I bit the bullet and added them on.

The next thing I decided to buy was an external hard drive for backing up the new machine. I use a backup service called BackBlaze to back up all my hard drives off site but I really could use one here. I used to always have an external hard drive that used Apple’s backup software “Time Machine” but I haven’t used that in years. My main hard drive in my Mac Tower is 8 TBs. That was an expensive hard drive (over $200) and the only thing that could back it up was another 8 TB hard drive. I never quite has the discretionary cash to get a second one.

With the new Mac Mini the built in hard drive is only a 1 TB SSD so I found a 2 TB external drive for about $50. I still can’t back up my big 8 TB drive (except off-site) but at least I’d have my new system all safely backed up. I’ve had to use Time Machine before to restore stuff so I’ll be happy to have it going again.

One more thing that I got was the Mac Mini Total Pro Mounting System. Right behind my monitor I have a bookshelf and on the underside of that shelf I wanted to mount the Mac Mini to keep it out of the way and in a safe spot. The shelf is just two brackets and a piece of pine board 8 inches wide and so it had a slight bow in it. I didn’t want to attach the Mac Mini to a bowed shelf so I ordered another bracket to put in the middle of the shelf. Mounting System $40 and bracket $6.

Then there is my Wacom tablet. It’s a 12 inch by 12 inch tablet that I got back around the year 2002. It barely works with my 13 year old computer. I had to do some workarounds to get it to function and some of its functions don’t work at all. So there is no way that tablet is going to work with my new Mac Mini. I didn’t have $500 to drop on a new Wacom so I got another brand. A Huion. It’s much smaller at about 11×6 inches but I got a refurbished one for only about $75. If I have to buy a better one eventually then I will but for now I wanted something.

I also bough some cables. I have one Firewire device I still want to use. So I bought a Firewire 400 to Apple Thunderbolt adaptor and a Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 Adaptor. $25 total for those two.

All told the $850 Mac Mini more than doubled in price to around $1756. That’s a big chunk of change but still a lot less than the $3000 it would cost me to get a new laptop. I’m a little bit sad that I will be retiring my old tower because it has served me well. Thirteen years is a long time to get out of a computer but its upgradeability served ne well. The Mac Mini isn’t upgradeable at all so I don’t expect it to last nearly as long. But long enough will be fine with me.

I’m in the mood to write another “Friends” walkthrough so let’s see what episode I’m up to. I haven’t watched many of them in the last two months since I wrote about S05E10 so it looks like I’m only up to Season 5 Episode 14 “The One Where Everybody Finds Out.” I remember this being a good one.

I did watch the “Friend’s” reunion show though. That was nice. I don’t have a lot to say about it besides that it was nostalgic but for the six actors involved the nostalgia was about working together all these years while for the rest of us the nostalgia was about watching the show. They even did some line readings from this very episode in the reunion show.

This episode is from February 11, 1999. So I’m going to check my calendar to see what I was doing that day. It looks like on that day I was working at Marvel Comics down in Manhattan. That week I also bought some comic books at Jin Handley’s Universe, some clothes at a local department store, and worked on a painting of a friend of mine. I remember I was trying to learn paint portraits and this was one of them. It was only okay. It takes a while to learn new skill.

I’m going to start the show now. It starts with them all in the girls’ apartment as they’re eating a takeout meal. Ugly naked guy is moving out of his apartment across the street! Ross should move in there. And we have the first plot line. Then a classic shot of them all looking through the window. Here comes the theme song.

Ross is now in the apartment and he loves it. I think this was a good move on the show’s part. Having Ross so close helped with the plots. As she’s by herself for a moment in the new apartment Phoebe sees Chandler and Monica across the street getting busy so she finds out that they’re together. Now everybody knows but Ross and as he’s Monica’s brother they still want to keep it from him. Funny hijinks in the rest of this scene.

Then it’s onto the coffee shop with Phoebe and Rachel discussing the situation and they fill in Joey that Phoebe has found out. Joey wants to stop pretending that no one knows but Phoebe wants hijinks. Joey is outvoted. He has to keep more secrets. Phoebe starts to come on to Chandler to mess with him. She’s really flirty with him.

Now we cut to Monica and Chandler in bed and having pillow talk. Chandler tells her about Phoebe and Monica is confused by the whole thing since she knows Phoebe well enough to know Chandler isn’t her type. It a short but amusing scene.

Morning comes and the three girls are in the apartment. They start to mess with Monica and Chandler. They know that “Doing laundry” is a euphemism for sex so Rachel give them her laundry to do and Phoebe has a big bag of quarters for just such and occasion. Ross walks in and there is more apartment talk. This is a prized NYC apartment so he’s going to have to woo ugly naked guy to sublet it. Then we learn that Ross’s wooing game isn’t that strong. Ross is upset and leaves. So do Phoebe and Rachel but on the way out Phoebe makes a pass at Chandler.

Monica susses out that Phoebe knows about them and is messing with them. A new scene happens as they storm into Joey’s and demand to know what he knows. He spills the beans about Phoebe and Rachel knowing. Now Monica and Chandler want Joey to keep quiet about them knowing so they can mess back. A classic sitcom setup. Joey just wants it all to be over.

A new scene in the girls’ place as Ross bemoans that he is not getting the apartment. Rachel tells him to learn what Ugly Naked Guy likes and use that to give him an edge. They got nothing so far. The scene moves onto Chandler and Monica starting to mess with Phoebe. He calls her up and hits on her. Rachel figures out that they know. Joey is there too and they get him to talk. Now the showdown is set up.

Here we go with Ross knocking on Ugly Naked Guy’s door. UNG is naked and drinking from a straw! Ross works the naked angle but we don’t know what he’s up to yet.

Meanwhile back across the street a game of romantic chicken starts to be played by the two sides as Chandler and Phoebe set a time for their “Date.” Then Joey calls them to the window. Ross is naked across the street with Ugly Naked Guy! Ross is drinking tea and eating muffins naked!

The romantic showdown begins between Chandler and Phoebe. Who will call it off first? This whole scene is good. No need to describe it. Just watch it. It ends with an “Awwww…” as everyone finds out that Chandler and Monica are not just fooling around but they’re in love.

The final scene has Ross moving into his new apartment and his boss is with him. Ross has been on a sabbatical from work because of a rage issue. Then, of couse, Ross sees Monica and Chandler though the window being romantic and it enrages him. That’s where we end. It was also the end of Ross’s career at the museum.

I’m looking at my ratings that I made for the show a decade ago and I gave this one four out of five stars. I’m surprised that I didn’t give it five out of five. I think this is one of my favorite episodes.

Now I’ll check the Uncut Friends website and see what was cut out of the current HiDef syndication episodes. They cut some Ugly Naked Guy jokes from the opening. The Chandler eating again part was funny. They cut out the first part of Joey’s Barbershop Quartet joke! I like that part. I bet they had to cut out the callback to it too. They cut a little of the pillow talk. The cut a Ross bedwetting joke. Yup, they cut the callback to the Barbershop Quarterbacked joke. A Ross apartment joke is gone. They cut a Joey getting frustrated with all the secrets joke. They cut the scene with naked Ross eating muffins! How could they! They cut the very beginning of the romantic showdown scene. Joey no longer gets the girls some wine. They cut the part where Chandler accidentally puts on scary music. And that’s it.

It seems like they cut a lot of good stuff from this one. Maybe it was one of those extra long episodes they used to have occasionally. Either way I’m glad to still have the old DVD versions of this show. It may not look as pretty but it’s the only uncut version out there.