Radiant Comics

I bought some new headphones after Christmas. A pair of Sennheiser HD 518 headphones. They’re pretty nice. For the sake of this blog I just went to check on the price of them at Amazon and it’s gone up. At this moment they go for $130 but they were only $97 when I bought them in December. They must have been on sale. I also had about $70 worth of “Rewards Points” from my credit card that I applied to the headphones so they only cost me about $35 in cash when all was said and done. I’m not sure I would have bought them without those rewards points. After all I really didn’t need them.

Every few years I seem to get obsessed with getting new headphones. I’m not even sure why. I don’t always get a new pair but I shop around. When I used to commute into NYC on the bus I sure needed a pair. Listening to music, the Stern Show, or whatever else I had to listen to was a must. Everyone was reading or had headphones on during that ride. It’s the only way to survive it. I didn’t ever have very good ones for most of my commuting years. Sure they were always a step up from the ones that came with whatever Walkman or Discman that I happened to own at the time but it was before the days of high end noise canceling headphones and the like.

Whenever I bought a new music player I would also buy a solid pair of headphones for about $40-$50. Back in the 1990s I used to be able to get some good ones from Radio Shack. I hardly ever bought anything from the Shack except for a pair of headphones that would go on sale every now and again. They were the small kind that sat on the ears. Not earbuds or over the ear headphones but more like the old school Walkman with the foam ear pads type. Only much better quality than the ones that came with the any music player.

It was also in the 90s that I first got introduced to ear buds. They are not my favorite type of headphones but what they lack in sound quality they make up for in portability. There have been times in my life when portability trumped sound quality and vice versa. I can’t even remember how I used to research headphones in the years before the internet but I did. I know that because I can recall buying one specific set of Sony earbuds that I was on the hunt for. I remember them because they were good and because I bought them at Macy’s. I never buy anything at Macy’s and who goes there to buy headphones anyway? But they were the only place they had them. They were about $40 and I remember them as my favorite set of earbuds.

I think I probably have always had a fascination with headphones because I never had a really nice stereo set-up like so many of my contemporaries had. I usually had a good boom box but I never listened to music very loud. Except for occasionally on my headphones. Those were what I had for listening to loud music. They were even better for hearing music in general and not just for loudness. With headphones I always heard things I never noticed before in whatever music I was listening to. My boom boxes were too lo-fi and played at too low a volume to hear all the bells and whistles of a song. And forget stereo separation on a boom box. They’re not built for that. You need headphone to really hear all the stereo tricks put into certain songs.

I wonder if as many people these days have home stereo equipment like they used to? I listen to most of my music with my computer and a nice set of speakers. The speakers are really only of boom box quality but they do me well. I have a nice stereo set-up these days but that’s more of a home theatre thing. I listen to way more TV on it than music. I imagine most stereo systems these days are part of a home theatre system rather than a music system. With a lot of music being digital on iPhones, iPods, and mp3 players in general are the younger generation even listening to stereo systems? I have no idea.

The Sennheiser HD 518 headphones that I just got are pretty good. They’re the large over the ear variety that I’m partial to. I already have a pair of over the ear noise canceling headphones so I bought these ones because they are of the open variety. They don’t cancel noise and let sound in and out of the back of the ear pieces. There is more bass in a pair of headphones like this than in noise canceling ones. I couldn’t wear these ones on the bus though because they leak too much sound and I’d have to turn them up too loud to drown out the bus noise. The bus is still a job for my noise canceling ones. Though I’m not on the bus much these days.

I am by no means an audiophile. Those are the guys who are really serious about their equipment. I’m not even sure if they’re that serious about music but they want it to sound really good. I’ve done a lot of reading of headphone reviews over the years and some people insist that headphones don’t sound their best until they’ve been “Broken in”. Some people leave them on at full volume (not while wearing them) for a week or even more after they buy a new pair. Others insist this is nonsense. I have no idea which is true but I’ve always wanted to try it. It’s appealing to think that I could buy some headphones, play them continuously for a week, and then have even better headphones. How cool! Of course I’ve never tried this because how could I possibly tell the difference? It’s not exactly a side by side comparison.

This is the first set of headphones I’ve bought in at least a few years. The last pair I bought was a set of in the ear noise canceling ones that I hardly ever have used. I thought I’d use them more but haven’t. Without the commute into NYC quality usually wins out over portability these days. Most of my headphones usage comes from listening to music when I go for walks. Sometimes I go for walks just to listen to music. Finding time to exercise or listen to music isn’t easy as an adult so I combine the two.

So far I’ve really been enjoying these new headphones. I like the open design as sometimes the noise canceling of my other pair just isn’t needed and I want the deeper bass. They’re big, comfortable, sound good, and fit well over my winter hats. I’ve already used them more than my in the ear noise canceling pair. That’s a win.

I really have to start writing down the ideas that seem to come to me right before I go to bed. I used to but I’ve gotten out of the habit. Getting ideas out of the blue at bedtime hasn’t happened much in a few years but I used to get all sorts of inspiration just before I was going to sleep at night or when I was actually in bed and about to fall asleep. It would be an idea for whatever. A story, a character, a project, a blog, a picture, or just about anything else could come to me. I don’t know why things would come to me then but they would.

They thing about having an idea come to me as I’m going to bed is that I don’t want to be bothered to write it down just then. I’d prefer to hit the sack and go to sleep. Anything that interrupts that is just plain annoying. Plenty of times I would say to myself, “I’m tired. I’ll write that idea down in the morning” only to have forgotten the idea by morning. Y’know what’s weird? I can remember that I had an idea but not what that idea was. There has to be some sort of name for that phenomenon.

In my early days of getting such an idea I would jot it down with pen and paper. That was jarring. Getting up and turning on a light right after I had gone to bed was not a pleasant thing. I thought I could circumvent all that by keeping a pen, notebook, and flashlight by my bedside but that didn’t quite work out. It sure seemed easier than getting up and turning on the overhead light and, to an extent, it was but the problem was writing in bed. Have you ever tried writing in bed by flashlight? It’s not easy. Where do you lean? On a pillow? Maybe prop yourself up? It take two hands to write without a table to put the paper down on. It’s a tough little juggle of elbows, hands, pen, and paper. All while groggy.

All that fumbling with paper in the dark eventually lead me to get a small tape recorder. That way I could leave the lights off, press a button, and speak my idea. It was less interruptive in that I could do it without lights but more interruptive in that I had to form words and speak them. I found out that wasn’t so easy. I kind of had to wake my brain up nearly all the way to speak. It wasn’t the same way with writing. I could form sentences and write them down fairly easily even when a little groggy with sleep but to speak sentences took even more waking up. I have no idea why that was. It was also a little odd listening to myself on a tape recorder the next day.

Over the years I got out of the habit of writing down ideas that came to me while going to bed. Or maybe I stopped getting ideas at bed time. I’m not sure which came first. I haven’t used my little tape recorder in at least a decade but I have a small idea notebook that’s kept in my studio and I will occasionally get up write something in. That’s a pretty rare event though.

Yet over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that things have started to come to me at around bedtime again. I’d tell you what they are but I can’t remember them. Just last night as I was turning in for the night I had an idea for something I wanted to write about in this blog. It wasn’t a big something but a small germ of an idea. I didn’t write it down and I’ve forgotten it. Maybe it will come back but if the past is an indicator it won’t. Weird.

I’ve had some overlapping ideas this week. That’s another strange idea related topic. Overlapping ideas are when I working on one thing and have a full blown idea epiphany for what I want to do next. It’s rare but can also be cumbersome. This week I started working on my first large canvas in half a year or so. I made the sketch for this one back in June but it’s a large complex image that I knew would take me a while to paint so I never quite got started on it until now.

This week I got that painting underway. I started with the rather long process of painting in the base colors. Laying in the base colors can be a boring process so my mind wanders while I do it. During this time I actually came up with something else I wanted to do. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it’s better to be excited about what I’m actually working on rather than what I might be working on.

I had to muscle my way through the boring part of the painting I got going and try not to be distracted by other ideas. That’s the problem with having a lot of ideas in my head all at once. They can all fight with each other and distract me from the task at hand. But I was able to fight off the new idea long enough to get through the boring underpainting. With that part done I could work on the more fun part of the painting. The improvisational meat of it. The part that’s about putting paint on canvas in an interesting way.

This doesn’t mean that the overlapping idea goes away. It’s not bedtime so I remember what it was. Of course that also doesn’t mean that the second idea will still be as well formed and interesting after I get through my current painting. Maybe I should write the idea down in my notebook now that I think about it. This second idea is still going to get done it’s just not knocking on the door of my here and now anymore. It’s no longer a distraction because I’m in the here and now with the painting I’ve currently got going. It’s a good feeling to have things straightened out and on course.

I bought a new sketchbook this week. I like sketchbooks. They’re cool. I think I may even like sketchbooks better than I like drawing in sketchbooks. They’re nice just as objects. As a general rule I like to draw on single sheets of paper rather than in books because it’s easier to do but for some things a sketchbook is better. Or at least it’s worth the little bit more effort it takes to draw in a book rather than on a single sheet of paper.

The sketchbook I bought this week was a Moleskine. It’s a small 3.5 x 5.5 inch red hardcover sketchbook. Hardcover sketchbooks are not a favorite of mine to draw in but I like them as objects. Usually I have to hold them open as I use my left hand to keep them flat. That’s a bit of a pain. I decided to put up with that for this one because I haven’t drawn in a hardcover sketchbook in a long time and wanted to make an interesting little hand drawn book out of this one. I want a small, red, hardcover book full of drawings more than I actually want to draw in it but since I’m the one doing the drawing I guess it’s up to me.

I heard a character on a TV show refer to Moleskine notebooks as “Notebooks for people with more money than sense”. That makes me giggle every time I think of it. It’s a comment on the fact that Moleskine notebooks are a little overkill. They’re well built and expensive. The little sketchbook I just bought cost me twelve dollars but I like it. I don’t disagree with the TV character’s sentiment but I like a well made notebook or sketchbook.

My main sketchbook is one I’ve mentioned before. A basic Strathmore 5.5 x 8.5 inch spiral bound sketchbook. It’s the kind you can find in any art supply store or even drug stores and supermarkets. The spiral binding means that you can spin the pages under until you get a new sheet of paper and never have to hold the book open. That makes things more convenient and comfortable. I have a couple of sketchbooks of this variety. My main one is my ink-book in which I draw small spontaneous ink drawings. This is where I come up with most of my ideas. I also have one of these same sketchbooks that I occasionally do pencil drawings in. Most of my pencil drawings are done on sheets of paper so I don’t work in this book too often.

I have a third spiral sketchbook that I bought last year as a sort of concept book. It has some writing and sketches in it plus some photos that I printed out on sticker paper and stuck down. It was supposed to be a new way for me to work out ideas but I never quite figured out how to work in it. I haven’t given up on it yet but it’s disorganized and I have to find a way to use it better. I like the idea of writing, drawing, and photography all working together but so far I have no idea how to make them all play nice together. Definitely the most “Work in progress” of my sketchbooks.

My newest type spiral sketchbook is for my newest comic “Message Tee”. The spiral sketchbooks I’ve been using for years have the spirals along the long side of the book just like a spiral notebook from my school days. This new sketchbook has the spirals along the short side. The top of the book. This usually doesn’t make a difference to me but sometimes it does. I find it a little easier to draw character portraits with the spirals out of the way on the top of the page. It’s not make-or-break but since I was buying this sketchbook for the purpose of drawing “Message Tee” characters I figured I’d give one of these top spiral sketchbooks a try. So far I like it.

Another type of sketchbook that I have but haven’t used yet is a hardcover Moleskine 8 x 5 inch landscape watercolor sketchbook. It’s called a landscape sketchbook because it’s bound on the short side. It opens up flat much better than when bound on the long side so a lot of people draw all the way across both pages. You can draw a broad sixteen inch wide landscape in this book. It’s also made with watercolor paper rather than the usual drawing paper. I have yet to find a use for this sketchbook. I rarely do landscapes and don’t work in watercolor too much so the purpose this book is made for doesn’t overlap with my habits. But it’s such a cool book! I like it as an object. Someday I’ll find a good use for it. Until then I’ll just look at it.

I have a couple of other sketchbooks laying around but they are failures. One is a small 4×5 inch hardcover sketchbook that I got for free when I bought some other art supplies. It’s not bad but it never caught my fancy. It seems a little heavy and blocky to me. It opens up pretty flat for a small hardcover but I think the paper may be a little too smooth for my taste. It’s cover is travel themed with a map and random old photos. I like history and I like maps but somehow this doesn’t work for me. It looks dull and a little tacky. There are about three of four pages where I tried to draw something in it but never quite succeeded. For whatever reason this one has been sitting around for about two years now.

The last sketchbook I have is a sort of imitation Moleskine. It’s from about six years ago when I was looking for a new pocket notebook. That’s when I discovered Moleskine notebooks and I bought this one to go along with a few other notebooks and sketchbooks that I was sampling. Now that I look at it closely this one is probably a notebook and not a sketchbook. The paper is a little thinner and smoother than a sketchbook. It has a nice brown and tan cover but it feels a little too slippery. Not good in the hand. This one never caught on with me, has drawings only on the first two pages, and has been sitting on my shelf for years doing nothing.

In looking at this list I’ve noticed something. My biggest sketchbook is only about 5.5 x 8.5. I guess anything over that size and the convenience of having a bunch of drawings that are easy to find as they are in a single book is eclipsed by the inconvenience of having to draw on top of a one inch stack of paper that is bound at the edge. Interesting. I never noticed that before. I used to have bigger sketchbooks but not in years.

One final thought about sketchbooks pops into mind. I remember, years ago, reading an anecdote by, I think, Paul Chadwick (cartoonist of “Concrete”) about losing one of his sketchbooks. He drew in sketchbooks all the time always carrying one with him. That was until he was out one day and left his sketchbook behind. He went back to get it and it was gone. He lost all the work and ideas he had in there. From then on in he only used loose sheets of paper. He’d carry some of those with him if need be. That story makes me scan my sketchbook pages into my computer regularly. I’d hate to ever lose one but if I do at least I’ll have a copy and won’t lose all the ideas. Alas Paul Chadwick’s story is from a time before we all had scanners so they wouldn’t have helped him but it’s a cautionary tale for all of us.

Sometime you just have to start. That’s my motto for this afternoon. I’ve had some sort of sinus/cold thing going on for the past week. Nothing too dramatic but it’s been slowing me down. It’s been okay getting the paying work done but being self motivated and getting my own work done has been a struggle. It always is when I’m not at my best. Heck, I don’t really have to be at my best to get things done. Maybe I should say, “At my average”. Being even a little sick definitely puts me below my average. But this afternoon I decided to stop trying to get my brain to decide what to do and just start doing something.

I always find it a little amazing how hard it is to decide what to work on. I think that stops a lot of people from ever even beginning any of their own creative endeavors. Everybody knows how and why to start paying endeavors. You start because the boss says to get it done and you’re doing it to earn a living. That’s easy. Why to start and make a painting, a drawing, knit a sweater, build a cabinet, or any other creative thing is a bit more tricky. I know a lot of people with an “If I’m not getting paid I don’t lift a finger” attitude towards life. I can understand that but that’s not me.

Often when I have no plan and can’t figure out what I want to next I draw. I pull out my sketch book, look for an idea that catches my eye, and work it into a more finished drawing. I can then use those more finished drawings for prints, paintings, or whatever else I decide to do. The drawing in and of itself is not the finished thing so that makes them easy to start and work on. There isn’t a lot of heavy lifting at this stage. It’s mostly a fun stage. The problem is that because of my sinuses that’s all I’ve been doing this week already. I haven’t had the strength for much else. Today I’m still not one hundred percent but I decided to get something going anyway. Luckily I had an unfinished painting hanging around.

I almost never have unfinished paintings hanging around. I’m a methodical artist. That means I’m method based. I come up with an idea and then I start with step one and move through all the other steps it takes to complete my vision. I leave room for improvisation, otherwise things can get dull, but overall I’ve got a plan. A method of doing things. Not every artist works that way, many are much more improvisational, but it suits me. As a result once I start a painting I usually finish it. Finishing is built into the method. But things don’t always go according to plan.

Sometimes things go astray. It’s usually the result of two things. One is when I’m just working by rote. When I’m going through the motions. I come up with an idea but it’s a pretty boring idea and I’ve got nothing else so I continue to execute the boring idea. Sometimes I don’t even realize how boring an idea it is until I struggle to get it done. Usually by half way through it’s obvious to me that the idea is dull and things aren’t going to work out. Mostly that’s before I get to the actual painting stage so it doesn’t result in many half finished paintings. Bad ideas usually reveal themselves as such before I’m at the “Committed to painting” stage.

The second way things go astray is when I lose sight of whatever vision I had of the work to begin with. I start with the idea, go through the steps, start the painting, but then the painting never quite comes together. The painting doesn’t match my original vision of it, often because my original vision wasn’t as strong as it should be, but the vision can also become blurred. It’s hard to match my original vision when I can’t see it anymore. It’s a frustrating problem.

This is also when a painting can become a real time-suck. It’s like being out for a drive and lost. You keep on driving and hope you’ll see something you recognize soon because it seems like the only option but you end up getting more lost and wasting more time. And it’s not like the painting is fundamentally bad and has to be abandoned it’s just directionless. And there is no end to the wandering in sight. Unlike driving a car there is no one to ask directions from.

The only thing I can do at that point is to make myself stop working on the painting and put it away. That’s hard to do because I want to finish it and make it work. I had just such a painting sitting around. I last worked on it about two months ago. I had a hard time putting it away because putting it away always feels like failure. It’s not failure because the key is to put it away long enough to forget whatever my original vision was and forget how much work I put into it.

That’s also what makes it hard to put the painting away. Knowing how much work I put into it. I worked on it for days and wanted to get it right but couldn’t. To put it away is to lose those days of work. But now, two months later, I don’t remember those days of work. They blur into the past and don’t mean anything to me. I’m free to obliterate whatever work I put into the ideas and the actual painting and just make it good. I don’t remember or care what my original idea was and now am free to follow whatever path works. That’s what putting it away does for me. But that takes time. I tried to pull it out after a month but couldn’t. I didn’t even want to face it.

It turns out today was the perfect day for working on it again. I not only wanted to get started on something but I wanted it to be something that I maybe could get finished sometime soon. Finishing something is also a way to get things going again. And here’s a good thing about these abandoned paintings of mine. I can often finish them, after they’ve been left for a while, fairly quickly. Usually there’s something good in them but they’re directionless. As long as I can find a new direction things go well. And a new direction is much easier to find after I’ve forgotten the old one.

This week I read my first digital book on my new iPad. I have to say that I enjoyed reading on the iPad more than I thought I would. I read the book through the Kindle app on the iPad. It was a spy novel that happened to be on sale at Amazon for 99¢. I hadn’t heard of the author or read a spy novel in ages but bought it because of its low price and to try out digital reading.

I have read a few comic books on my iPad and also on my laptop but I didn’t like that experience. The iPad is a little too small for comic book reading and though my 13 inch laptop is about the perfect size when turned sideways it’s a bit clumsy reading a comic book on a sideways laptop. Even one as light as the MacBook Air. Plus comic books on a screen are really bright and a little too hard on the eyes at times.

Another knock against reading comics on my iPad has to be the plethora of mediocre comics that I have for it. Circumstance has conspired so that good comics don’t make it onto my iPad. Y’see, I’m a regular comic book reader. I go to the store every week and buy a few comics. I also buy hardcover and softcover collections of comics. I probably have at least twenty collected editions laying around waiting to be read. I’m discriminating so it’s all pretty good stuff. At least I generally like the stuff I buy. That’s not even to mention tons of good comics in my collection that I could reread if I choose to.

So what comics do I have digitally? A bunch of free stuff that I found around on the internet. Comics comics that I never thought were good enough to buy but kind of want to try out. Mostly mediocre comics. As a result I must have two hundred comics on my iPad these days. But why would I read them? When I have a few moments to read something I can either pick up a comic I bought because I want to read it or my iPad to read some comics that I didn’t think were good enough to bother buying but could find for free. So far the actual comics have always won over the virtual ones so I don’t think I’m going to start reading too many digital comics any time soon.

On the other hand I don’t have a lot of unread books laying around. I don’t read as many books as I once did because my eyes could no longer take it as I got older. After working on the computer or drawing all day reading can be hard on the eyes. And as I settle fully into middle age my reading vision is just starting to fail me. I don’t need reading glasses yet but I can see that I will. There is never as much light as there used to be.

I also got in the habit of giving away books that I read. I have enough comic books filling up the place so there isn’t much room for novels and non-fiction books. Besides I rarely go back and read anything a second time. So in recent years I haven’t had a lot of books around in general plus they were a bit hard on my eyes so my reading habits dwindled. As I wanted to read a bit more I decided to give this digital thing a try. Why not? I had the iPad already.

When I bought my iPad this past Fall using it as an e-reader wan’t even a thought in my mind. I knew it could do it but I didn’t care as I had no interest in any kind of digital book reading. I’m not even sure what changed my mind. I downloaded the Kindle app for my iPad right away but it sat there for a month or two almost unlooked at. It wasn’t until I noticed that Amazon started a Kindle lending library for Amazon Prime members (of which I’m one) that I bothered to look at it. Turns out the lending library is not for the iPad but it got me to notice the 99¢ daily book deals. As an impulse purchase I decided to try a dollar book. I’m glad I did.

It’s the simple stuff that I like about the Kindle app and reading digitally in general. I can make the font a little bigger so that I will have less eye strain. That and I the fact that I can turn down the brightness and make the type sepia makes reading on the iPad all around easier on my eyes. It is quite pleasant. Easier than reading a real book. At least some real books.

I also like that just touching the screen turns the page. I don’t even have to think about it and it doesn’t break my reading concentration. As a matter of fact it turned the page so fast and smoothly that I think my concentration was actually better than when reading a real book. There was even an interesting little feature, that you can turn off, where you can underline passages and see the passages that other people have underlined. I found it interesting to see what passages other people liked. I even underlined one myself for the heck of it.

One thing my digital book buying highlighted is that comic book publishers are going to have a hard time with the pricing of their comic books. It the real 3D world a comic book is different than a regular book and those differences are obvious. A single comic is cheaper than a novel and has colorful pictures. After you read a comic you can look at it too. You can look at the drawings, relive some parts, and view it non-linear way. But somehow when faced with buying comics digitally they’re exactly the same as books with less bang for the buck.

I find that comic books lose a little of their uniqueness when they’re digital. I can’t flip through one like I would a real life comic but I can linearly sample a few pages. And with digital comics being two to three dollars a pop and at least some digital novels being 99¢ it’s tough to see the value. Especially since the post-reading “Flip through” value of a comic isn’t there with digital comics. It just doesn’t handle like a real comic. Comic books can be more social than a regular book and that is harder to do with a digital copy.

But anyway I’ve bought a couple other “Deal of the Day” books from Amazon plus I’ve downloaded a few free books. I actually stopped myself from getting anymore for the moment so as not to inundate myself with unread books. Sometimes that can be paralyzing. But I started reading a second novel and I’ll see how that one goes. Overall I’d have to say that this e-book thing is a s success for me.