Radiant Comics

I’m taking a shoe risk again. Not as much of a risk as I took a couple of years ago but still a risk. The risk is actually in wasting money but is also in pain and foot discomfort. It was in 2009 that instead of buying my usual Rockport shoes I ordered some Skechers. I remembered owning some of them in the 1990s and they were okay. Plus they were a cheaper alternative to the expense of Rockports. Too bad the 2009 Skechers never quite fit right. At first I though it was just new shoe break in time but it wasn’t. I struggled with those Skechers for months before abandoning them and buying my usual Rockports.

So why didn’t I buy my usual Rockports this time you ask? I don’t know. I think I’m just bored with them. And I alway hate spending ninety bucks on a pair of shoes. I could get some really cool comics or art supplies for that much money. But keeping my feet happy is important in life. Maybe that’s not true for everyone but for me it is.

I’ve been buying the same kind of shoes, one in black and one in brown, for at least a decade. That’s why I’m kinda tired of them. It’s boring buying the same thing over and over. Even if I do like them. The problem is that they’re really good shoes. I stand all day and good shoes make it easier on my legs and back. Good shoes can be the difference between back pain and no back pain. I prefer no back pain. Good shoes are hard to find. The Skechers certainly didn’t do the job. At least I know that the different type Rockports I bought will fit. Rockports come in the extra wide size that I need.

The new Rockports I bought are walking shoes. My usual Rockports are just regular shoes. I’m not sure what the conceptual differences are between the two. Of the new walking shoes one pair looks like regular shoes and the other pair looks more like sneakers. I’m a little worried about the sneaker-like pair since sneakers are no good for standing all day in but I need a new pair of sneakers anyway. Or maybe they’re good for walking in? I like to go out for walks so we’ll see.

I’ve never bought a pair of the sneaker-like hiking boots. I know people who like them but they don’t seem any different than sneakers to me. Except that they come in earth colors. I haven’t owned any hiking boots in years so it really doesn’t matter but I figure that if I ever need some I’ll get ones that don’t look like sneakers. I already have a pair of sneakers.

My worst new shoe experience was way back in the early 1990s. It had nothing to do with the shoes but had to do with being caught in the rain. I bought one pair of shoes a year back then. I was a young man without a lot cash in hand and I certainly didn’t want to spend whatever dough I did have on shoes. I had just purchased a pair for probably about $80 when about a week later I got caught in the rain. A huge down pour. I had been caught in the rain before but this time, for whatever reason, my shoes didn’t dry correctly. Mold or something grew in them. I’m no expert on plant life living in shoes but something was wrong.

I couldn’t see the mold but I could smell it. The shoes were nearly brand new and I didn’t want to spend even more money to replace them. I ended up cleaning the insides of the shoes with bleach. I figured that was the meanest liquid I could get my hands on so maybe it would do the job. It worked but only temporarily. The smell would always come back and I’d have to clean the shoes out with bleach once a month or so. That was an annoying pair of shoes. I’ve gotten plenty of pairs of shoes, boots, and sneakers wet before and after that but I’d never had mold (or whatever) grow in them. I wonder what that was about?

The other stuff I bought this week are two new round corner punches. They are no where near as important or expensive as shoes but they’re worth a mention. A round corner round punch is a little gizmo that makes a round cut on any square corner you stick in it. When I make my small baseball card-sized art cards I prefer that their corners are round. I like the way it looks better. It makes the cards look fancy.

I’ve been using a Marvy brand round corner punch but it has gotten dull. After that happens there is more mashing of the corners than cutting going on. Bad scene. That was my second Marvy round corner punch and I was up for trying a couple of new brands. It turns out the the X-Acto corner rounder I bought is nearly the same design. It’s just a little wider. Not the corner puncher itself but the holder/base.

The problem with the Marvy and X-Acto brand ones are that they hurt my hand to use. A button has to be pressed in order to cut the corner and it takes a bit of force to press that button down. Especially if I’m cutting the corners of my cards that have been laminated. My solution to this is to use a small four by six inch piece of wood grasped in the palm of my hand to press the button. I can roll it across the button and get a little leverage. I wouldn’t recommend using the Marvy or X-Acto round corner punches without such a piece of wood. Otherwise it would be too rough on a thumb or the palm of a hand.

The winning corner rounder, at least so far, is the new Fiskar one that I just bought. Its design is totally different than the other two. At eleven dollars it is also the most expensive. The X-Acto one was seven dollars and, I think, the Marvy one was five or six dollars. The Fiskar one actually uses some leverage so that the button/lever is easy to push. I don’t need a piece of wood with this one even when cutting through laminated paper. I’ve only used it a little bit so I don’t know how rugged it is but if the Marvy is any indication the blades will dull before anything breaks on it. Once the blades are dull it need to be replaced.

So much for this week’s excitement. I wonder what lies in the future?

One of my art teachers back in college told us that people are jealous of artists because artists have the freedom to say, “I don’t want to work today. I want to sit under a tree”. I can understand that and to some extent I have that freedom but not really. Maybe if I were richer I’d have that freedom but who knows? I also like to work (on my own art) more than I like to sit around doing nothing. Of course my old teacher was a lot older then than I am now so maybe when I’m up to his age then I’ll want more tree time.

Contemplating all that brings me to the question that dominates my artistic life, “What am I going to do today?”. That’s not a question that most people ask themselves. Most people have a nine to five job so there is no question what they’re going to do that day. They’re going to go to work. If someone is out of work that question can dominate their lives but in a bad way. Most people, if they have no job to go to, have nothing to do. That can be a ugly scene. People with no purpose are often unhappy.

My, “What am I going to do today?”, is different. I don’t have a nine to five job to go to but I do have freelance work that pays my bills. I know I’m going to do that in a timely manner so it’s not even a worry. I’m not a procrastinator so when I have paying work I get it done as soon as I can so that I will have the maximum amount of time possible to work on my own artwork. That is where the question applies. My own artwork.

I like to mix things up art-wise. I like to paint in oil, acrylic, and gouache. I like to draw in pencil, ink, marker, and even a little charcoal. I like to take photos and manipulate them and my art on the computer. I have a web comic. None of this makes me much money. Why do I do it you ask? “Because I like to”, is the only answer I have for you. It’s my calling if you will. If any one of these things made me money then I would probably do that thing the most. At least I think I would. That seems to be what other artists do but I don’t really know for sure.

Since I don’t get paid for my art I have to be self-motivated rather than money motivated. That means that I have to see value in the work I spend my time making. That’s not easy but it has to be done if I want the happiness and satisfaction that comes with doing one’s own work. I’ve found that the key to being self-motivated is knowing the answer to the question, “What am I going to do today?”.

Knowing the answer to that question is all about making decisions. Another teacher of mine once said that there are no answers only decisions. That means to make a choice. There are often no right or wrong answers. Instead there are choices between A and B. Neither is right and neither is wrong but still a decision has to be made between the two. Pick whichever one you want and go with it. Make a decision. Don’t worry about being wrong because that’s not what it’s about.

I like to have decided “What am I going to do today?” the night before. I prefer to go to bed and wake up knowing what’s on my plate for the coming day. That’s not unusual but it’s something most people take for granted. Some people are even trapped by it but that’s another story. A lot of times I don’t even have to think about it much. If I start a painting that’s going to take me a week or so then I know for a week what I’ll be doing that day. It’s when that week is over that things get tricky at times. What do I start next? A decision has to be made.

Sometimes even if I know what I want to do I can’t do it. Things can go badly or energy can be low. A decision can be made that I can’t follow through on for whatever reason. That’s when another decision has to be made. Sometimes two or three. The key is not looking at them as “Wrong answers”. Like my teacher said, “There are no answers”. Put aside whatever isn’t working and pick something else up. I can’t be afraid to change what I am doing on any given day.

This topic comes up because as I write this I find myself in one of those transition days. I recently finished a big thing and took care of some small things and now find myself wondering what to start next. I actually thought about it last night and made a decision on what to to today. The decision must have been made late in the day though because when I woke up this morning I discovered that I had no idea what I was going to do. I completely forgot what I decided on. Weird. I can’t remember at all even after some effort. So I decided to write this.

Usually I’m an evening or night time writer. Maybe I’m more comfortable writing then or maybe it’s because I need the daylight for making art. Or it could be because I have a hard time getting into making art if I’m interrupted in the morining. If I don’t start on some piece early in the morning I won’t be getting started at all. I’ll stand there and awkwardly stare at it. All my timing will be thrown off. Sometimes I can start again after lunch but not always.

In order to be self-motivated you really have to make habit work for you. I get up early and start working by eight. I have the most energy in the morning so that’s when I do my most creative work. A schedule is important and no one is there to make you stick to the schedule so it takes a bit of work to make yourself stick to it. When the schedule goes ka-blooey is when things get difficult and sometimes my energy leaves me. I might lose a lot of the day because of something unexpectedly throwing my morning schedule off. Throw off the afternoon schedule and it doesn’t matter. I can get right back to work when the opportunity arises. I don’t know why.

Anyway you look at it it’s not usual for me to write in the morning. I also need quiet to write yet noise to do artwork by. I listen to the Howard Stern show, music, or documentaries in the morning as I work. Once again habit is important because once I turn something on I don’t want to turn it off. It keeps me going. I don’t like to pause what I’m listening to in order to write. I prefer to write during a time of day when I’m tired of listening to things. Yet here I am writing this in the morning. All because I forgot the answer to the question, “What am I going to do today?”.

I bought two new sketchbooks this week. Though I have great affection for sketchbooks it’s a little odd because I’m not really much of a sketcher. Still all the different types of sketchbooks appeal to me. I draw in a sketchbook regularly but drawing is different than sketching. I define drawing as making marks on paper in an interesting way. Sketching is a category of drawing that refers to making a basic or underlying drawing of some object. The thing about sketching is that first you decide what you are going to draw and then you draw it. Since a lot of my work uses a surrealist automatic drawing method I don’t always know what I am going to draw before I start drawing. Hence I’m not sketching.

The one type sketchbook that I have been drawing in for a decade now is a small spiral bound book. I like spiral bound ones because they open up flat. I find it easiest to draw on a piece of paper that is not attached to any book but it’s easier to look through a bunch of drawings if they are in a book. That’s why I do most of my “Basic idea” drawings in sketchbooks and the intermediary and finished drawings on sheets of paper.

Back in the 1990s I used to use black hard cover sketchbooks. I really like those type of sketchbooks as objects. They’re good looking and durable. That was important in the days that I got out more and would draw in bars and eateries. A flimsy sketchbook would get battered and ruined after too much carrying it around and pulling it out to place down on questionable tables. The hardcover was great protection but it made the book difficult to open up flat. I was forever holding the book flat with my left hand as my right hand drew. It was a clumsy way to draw and why I finally abandoned them.

When I was out and about more I also used to carry a small notebook in my back pocket. The small spiral 69¢ type of notebook. Since I’ve been working at home I’m out of that notebook habit but just before then I sought to find a more durable replacement for the paper 69¢ notebook. This lead me to a lot of small sketchbooks and Moleskine notebooks. I must have bought a half dozen small notebooks before settling on a softcover Moleskine notebook that I still use but never carry anywhere. The other five I’ve tried to find uses for but somehow they’re too flawed for me to embrace. I do like them as objects though. Blank books are full of potential to me.

One of the two new sketchbooks I bought was a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook. That means it has some thick paper in it that can do a decent job at absorbing wet media. I haven’t actually tried it yet but the paper looks nice. This notebook isn’t spiral bound but does a good job of opening up flat. The binding is on the short side of the book so it’s landscape formated. I got it that way because I thought it would lay flat better. It seems to. I’m not even sure what I’m going to use the book for but I think I might try out some of my markers with it. Or gouache. I’m planning on bringing it with me to the park.

The second sketchbook I got is some sort of visual presentation sketchbook. It’s some guy’s idea of a good way to organize his thoughts and dream up visual presentations. Some pages even have small boxes printed on them to storyboard things. That all sounded like an interesting idea but upon receiving the book it seems like nothing special. It might even be a little annoying. They are words of encouragement and inspiration on some pages but I find that distracting. Plus the pages with boxes printed on them mean nothing to me. I’m used to drawing my own little boxes where I want them. At least it’s a spiral bound book. It might not be for me but that’s not the concept author’s fault. It obviously works well for him and other people. I’m still going to try and find a use for it.

A third item I got this week was a new bag to carry the sketchbooks and other stuff in. I’m always looking for the perfect new bag but my needs are so peculiar that I never find it. I generally need two bags, a small one and a large one, anyway so one bag doesn’t solve my problems. The main issue with me and bags is that I need them to carry both art supplies and a camera. I only need a bag when I go into NYC to take photos and draw in the park. I need a lot of little and medium size pockets for the art supplies and a big, or at least a wide, pocket for the camera. It’s a clumsy arrangement.

For the last two years I’ve been using an art bag. It’s a pretty big bag as it’s been made to fit 14×17 inch pads of paper. It has a lot of nice pockets for stuff but is heavier than I’d like it to be. Plus it’s made out of that black nylon that I really don’t like. I prefer my bags be made from canvas. I do like the art bag but it turns out that I have little need for carrying around 14×17 inch sheets of paper so it’s a little much. My sketchbooks are much smaller than that.

I also have an 11×14 inch bag that I often use as a camera bag if I’m going to a party, picnic, or family gathering. I don’t carry many art supplies on such occasions so the small bag is fine. It’s a good bag and I don’t want to replace it (unless a perfect one comes along) but it’s no good for my Bryant Park drawing and photography excursions.

The new bag is a laptop messenger stye bag. I think most bags these days are built to fit laptops. This one has a lot of nice compartments and is smaller and lighter than my art bag. It’s made of canvas, as I like, but it also has an awful lot of nylon lining in it. Some nice pen slots in the front too. I’m going to give it a try on my first Bryant Park trip so we’ll see how it works out.

One feature that I really grew to like on my art bag was the outside water bottle pocket. I’m not usually one for carrying water with me but when I’m outside on a summer day in Manhattan it sure is nice to have some water with me. I hate carrying the extra weight but I like being able to drink some water when I want to. Neither my small bag nor my new one have this outside pocket. I’m going to have to improvise. Perfection is an elusive creature. Isn’t it?

There is a nice breeze blowing through my windows right now and it’s letting me know that springtime has arrived. It’s nice to see the spring and light jacket weather. I do enjoy wearing a sport coat. And even though I like long coat weather too I get tired of the cold by the middle of February. That’s when the “Is this cold ever going to end” feeling hits. Well the cold has ended for this year.

One sure sign is that I mowed the lawn for the first time this season. That’s always a significant event because it means I’ll be mowing the lawn about once a week until sometime in November. There really should be some sort of festival celebrating this modern seasonal milestone. Day of the mower. Let’s have a party.

Mowing the lawn also means that I have to take the snow plow off of the front of the John Deere riding mower and put the cutting deck on. It’s not a hard thing to do but it does take some effort. It’s usually a race each spring between how fast the grass grows and how fast I can get the mower ready. Usually the grass wins because I’m in no hurry to cut it for the first time. There is often some raking to be done after the first mow because the grass is tall. It wasn’t too bad this year though.

I split the John Deere job up this year. I always mean to do that but I never seem to. First I sharpened the cutting blades on the mower deck and then I took the plow and wheel weights of off the tractor. That’s what I have to do before the mower deck goes on. because you can’t plow and mow at the same time. Imagine that. But Instead of putting the mower deck on right away I put it aside and did other things. Later on in the week I put the mower deck on and cut the grass.

Most years I take the plow off and put the mower deck on all in one go. It’s always tiring since there is a lot of moving of heavy things and getting down on the ground to hook things up. I always wanted to break the job in two but never did. Somehow the momentum of doing the first part lead me into the second part. Until this year when I finally said, “What’s the hurry?”. I took the winter stuff off on Monday and waited through some rainy days until Friday to put the cutting blades on. It was much more relaxing and much less fatiguing.

It seemed a little odd to seeing the lawn freshly cut following the winter. After I finished cutting the lawn I went back in the house and did a little work for a while and had some lunch. I went about my day as normal. When I went to the mailbox in the afternoon I was startled a bit by the freshly cut lawn. Sure I was the one who cut it but I still wasn’t used to seeing it so neatly trimmed. It was a weird sort of moment when the world isn’t quite how I remembered it. Strange.

I also had my big spring tidy-up this week. At least in my studio. That’s when instead of cleaning the center of the room, like usual, I pull out all of the furniture and clean behind and underneath everything. Man did I vacuum up a lot of dust. It takes all day too as I dust and scrub all around. Everything attracts dust. Especially electronic equipment. I was buried in dust. I wonder if I could get a robot to do that cleaning for me?

Another part of spring cleaning is organizing things and getting rid of a lot of crap that’s been accumulating all winter. Y’know, that stuff that you put in a spot, “Just for now” until you can find a proper place for it. This is the time I decide if it has a proper place or if it should be chucked. If it needs a spot that means that I may have to chuck something else that is just taking up space. I’ll look at something and ask myself if I’ve even thought about that object in the last year. Sometimes I haven’t thought of some random object in the last five years. That’s when it’s safe to get rid of it and something new can take its spot.

I even replaced my rags. I keep a few old T-shirts torn up into rags hanging underneath my drawing table. I use them for many rag functions such as cleaning my drawing table, wiping my brushes on, and cleaning paint off of things that I get paint on but shouldn’t have. Some people use paper towels for such things but I got tired of buying paper towels only to throw them away. It seemed pointless and I was going through too many rolls of paper towels. So, years ago, I decided to minimize my paper towel usage and go with rags. I always have plenty of old clothes to tear up so that’s never a problem. I only replace the rags once or twice a year anyway. It’s not like I’m making huge messes everyday. The new rags are green and blue and look quite colorful hanging under my drawing table. Snazzy.

Another sign of spring for me is putting away the thermal shirts. I keep the house fairly cool in the winter. It’s usually between 63-66 Fahrenheit in here because I find it helps me think. If it gets too warm I have a harder time getting things done. But I don’t like to be cold so I wear a lot of layers of clothes.

Up until two years ago I wore sweaters. Nothing fancy just a solid color sweater but they kept me warm. For some reason, about two years ago, I got tired of sweaters and I switched to thermal shirts for winter warmth. I would wear three or four layers everyday. A regular T-shirt, a long sleeved T-shirt, a thermal shirt, and maybe second thermal shirt. The second thermal shirt was for when I was feeling chilly at any particular time. It could come off and on as time passed. Somehow wearing extra shirts for warmth doesn’t interfere with my thinking.

It’s now been about a week since I’ve had a thermal shirt on. That’s how I can tell spring is here. It’s a good thing to because the cuffs on my thermal shirts are fraying. I was beginning to look like a bum. I need some new thermals next year. Now I’m back to my springtime T-shirt under a collared shirt look. Depending on the temperature I can take the collared shirt on or off or keep it buttoned or unbuttoned. I’m all about layers and options. At least until the summer heat comes and I’m all about shorts and a T-shirt.

I still have a layer of thermal when I’m biking. At least on some days. Since it’s hit the 80s already this spring I’ve had days with no thermal but most days I’ve still got it on. The windbreaker, hood, and gloves are all gone for the season though. It’s T-shirt, thermal, and jersey right now. Some days just the T-shirt and jersey. I don’t even have a proper cycling jersey. I wear a football jersey because it is a crazy color green. I like to be visible when I ride. Such is the springtime.

I got a new drafting chair this week. It’s a “Safco 3442GR Metro Extended Height Swivel/Tilt Chair” and I can already tell it’s better than my “Martin’s Universal Designs” one. Mind you, the chair that I bought in about 1991 and used until about 2008 was a “Martin’s Universal Designs” chair and that one was great. I liked that chair a lot until it finally broke and I couldn’t fix it. I liked it enough to order another chair of the same brand. But they sure don’t make them like they used to.

The second Martin’s Universal Designs chair (it was red) broke about an hour after I got it out of the package. It was a weld that broke. Nothing structural. It was one of the levers that was used to adjust the angle of the back. Annoying but it only took a vice-grip in place of the lever to adjust the angle. I tried to get some satisfaction with the vendor I ordered it from, mercantila.com, but they were less than helpful. I’ll never order anything from them again. I even curse them every time they send me an e-mail. Which, of course, is often since I’m now on their customer list.

The next thing that went was because the center post/pneumatic tube, which sits in the middle of the wheel base, isn’t the correct size. The manufacturing tolerances are off. As I sat on the chair (and I mostly stand and work so the chair doesn’t get a heavy work load) the center post slowly and imperceptibly was driven down through the wheel base until months after I bought it the center post was scraping the floor. I’ve never seen that happen in a drafting chair and I worked at a place that had tons of drafting chairs. Sure chairs break but the center tube always stays in place.

The red chair finally became next to unusable when the plastic ring that holds the metal tube in place broke. That made the chair sway from side to side if it was at its full height and I always sat on it at its full height. It would be okay as a regular height chair if it wasn’t made so poorly. A lot of the other minor plastic pieces were crumbling and breaking as time went by. That and the center post scraping the floor make it a pretty poor chair. Horrible even.

The new chair (which is grey) seems to be much better made from the get go. Nothing broke right away and nothing has broken since I’ve been using it. The plastic doesn’t seem brittle and it looks better built from top to bottom. Safco seems to be more on the ball. I bought the chair from Amazon.com because I buy a lot of stuff from them and I know they have a good return policy in case I get a lemon. No more unknown vendors for me.

After my bad experience with the red drafting chair I was not going to buy one sight unseen but there are just no places around here that sell drafting chairs. I got my 1991 chair at Pearl Paint in Paramus New Jersey but I don’t ever get over to those parts anymore. Almost all of my art supplies are purchased over the internet except for those I get at the local A.C. Moore. Arts and crafts stores tend not to have drafting chairs and I had no interest in going on a long quest for one. I’ve grown tired of quests.

There are plenty of office stores that sell chairs but none of them are drafting chairs. Drafting chairs are like a normal office chair except they go higher. Since my computer and drawing table are set up for me to work standing I need a chair that’s at about my standing height. Drafting chairs tend to be a little shorter than standing height but that’s okay. I only use the chair for a small portion of my day so I can reach for a little while.

I haven’t bought any other art supplies in some time. I stocked up over the winter so I’m good for now. I was going to get an iPad 2 but they’re hard to come by. I’ll have to wait until supply catches up with demand. I pretty much bought every marker I’ll ever need this past winter so there has been no need to get any more of them. I’m also stocked up on paint and canvas for the moment. Printer ink is an expensive pain in the ass. I hate buying it but there always seems to be a need. At fifteen bucks a cartridge you can go broke fast. I think that just about every time I finish a print one cartridge or another need replacing.

I did finish a print this week necessitating that I buy a new blue ink cartridge. I use a lot of blue in my prints so that’s the color that needs to be replaced most. I had to mess around with my Photoshop color settings in order to get the print done. For some reason the settings were really off. I do a lot of my prints in Illustrator as vector art but sometimes print them through Photoshop. I printed a file through Illustrator and things were fine but when I printed the same file through Photoshop the colors, though the same on-screen, printed wildly wrong. I eventually got things to print correctly but I still have no idea why they printed incorrectly in the first place.

I even re-made the “Moment In Time” cards that I printed two weeks ago. The first printings had a yellowish cast to them that I didn’t notice at the time I made them. I figured I’d live with the yellowish cast since the cards weren’t made for anything but my own contemplation but then all I could contemplate was that yellowish cast. It drove me to distraction so I threw them out and started again. They came out much better since I corrected my Photoshop color settings. The sunshine looks like sunshine again. Now i can think.

An odd thing happened to me the other week. I usually finish my five “Four Talking Boxes” comic strips for the following week on Thursday mornings. I don’t know why. It’s just ended up that way. I used to finish them one a day or on Sundays but neither of those habits stuck and somehow Thursday mornings became the time I worked on my strips. I write them all week on no set schedule. Whenever I have the time to write one I do but Thursday is the time to finish them.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a lot of strips early. Then things conspired
to leave me nothing to do on a Monday morning. I was tired and having a hard time concentrating on anything so I decided that rather than waste the day I would get my strips finished. So I did. I was quite proud that I managed to get things done in the low energy state I was in. Plus I got things done early. Always a thrill.

That’s when the odd thing happened. I got a little annoyed that my strips were already finished. Now what was I going to do on Thursday morning? It was a completely silly and pointless feeling but was there none the less. What was extra weird was that I was a little tired of my routine of getting the strips done on Thursday morning. I was even thinking about changing it up. Now I’ll leave it as it is. If it isn’t broken I won’t try to fix it.

So that’s the news from around these parts. Anything happening out there?