Radiant Comics

The other day I was on a photography forum that I sometimes frequent. It’s just a bunch of people who like and make photographs posting messages on a message board about photography. One question that popped up got me thinking. The question was, “Price not being an issue what is your dream camera?”. It didn’t get me thinking about what my dream camera was. It got me wondering why I don’t have a dream camera. The notion has never even crossed my mind.

First off, despite my interest in and practice of photography, I don’t consider myself a photographer. I am an artist first and foremost. One of the mediums I work in is photography but it isn’t first on my list. Painting and drawing come first. That’s how I spend most of my creative time and energy. I like photography and I like cameras but that question made me realize I have no dream camera.

I am a gadget guy in general. I like handy little devices that make my life a little easier. I find them clever and useful. I even like gadgets that don’t really do much but are cool anyway. I can push buttons and scroll through software with the best of them. I even like old gadgets that are obsolete but become nostalgic little time machines. I’m thinking right now of breaking out my Gameboy camera and going retro. Yet I have no dream camera.

I certainly spent a lot of time researching different cameras before I bought a new one this fall. I must have a dozen models of cameras on my Amazon wish list. I had to even made a special camera wish list so I could keep track of them a little easier. But none of them were dream cameras. They were just the ones I may or may not have bought depending on what I would decide. By the way, I decided to keep things fairly cheap with a $400 camera rather than a $800 one. It ended up being an easy decision since I didn’t have $800 to spend on a camera. Even if I did the camera really wasn’t any dreamier.

I think the lack of a dream camera has to do with the distinction between being an artist rather than a photographer. There is no “Dream” equipment for an artist. Sure I may prefer one brand, type, or color of paint, paper, or canvas over another but it really doesn’t matter that much. One of the fun things and one of the strengths about being an artist is that you can make something out of nothing. With pencil and a piece of paper I can make something. With more elaborate tools I can make more elaborate things but the basic making something out of nothing doesn’t change. Of course nothing isn’t really nothing, it’s art supplies, but you get the point. An artist can make a picture where there wasn’t one before with only the most basic tools. Some chalk and a wall.

No matter how talented a photographer is they can’t make a photo with a stick and some sand. They need a camera. A photographer’s talent is meaningless without a camera so therefore they have dream cameras. On the other hand an artist doesn’t have any dream equipment but has dream talent. Most artists dream about having someone like DaVinci’s talent. Would wouldn’t want to be able to draw and paint with his skill? But no one dreams about having DaVinci’s pencils, paper, or paints. What good would they do us without his talent?

There is a lot to be said about having the right art supplies. I’m a firm believer in the right tool for the right job. But I’m also a believer in making things with the tools you have. There are certainly a lot of things that make an artist’s job easier. I know how to mix any color from the three primary ones but is sure is easier to have a lot of different colors pre-mixed and available for purchase in tubes. I’ve been thinking for years about getting a new and fancier easel but I never do because the old one holds my painting in place just fine. What would a fancier one really do for me? It might help me out a bit in certain situations but I know it won’t make me more talented.

I can understand a photographer’s notion of a dream camera. Sometimes the type of camera does matter. A lot of photographers can take interesting photos no matter what they’re shooting with but there are certain types of photos that not all cameras are capable of taking. The general dream of photographers is to be able to take clear photos and control the focus and depth of field no matter how little light there is. You need extremely well made lenses to do that. And usually the better a camera and lens is at capturing those elements the more expensive it is.

A better camera might not make a photographer more talented but it could make it easier for him to express his talent. If you want to take photos in dimly lit clubs and bars then you’d better have a lens that lets in a lot of light. If you want to freeze the action at a sporting event then you’d better have a big lens. If you want to capture the fine detail of life then you’d better have a sharp lens and large negative/sensor. Those are extremes of photography and they can cost a lot of money.

If you want to do those things in a photo but you can’t quite do what you want to do then you’ll dream about having a camera that helps your talent express itself. If you want to make a beautiful painting but you can’t dreaming about expensive equipment is never a thought. Your only dream is to have more talent. Because paint is paint. An interesting distinction.

I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions. My grandmother always said that good habits were as easy to develop as bad ones and I bought into that. I develop good habits as much as I can and stop bad habits when I notice them. I find that helps me get through life. It also means that waiting until the first of the year to start a good habit or stop a bad habit is not my habit. So I never make New Year’s resolutions. New Year’s ramblings are more my speed.

I also have never said, “I’m glad year X is over. That was a bad year”. Or the opposite. I’ve never blamed bad things happening with the year they happen in. The year is just a number we use to measure time. Sure I remember some times fondly and associate those times with a year but it’s not the year I remember fondly. The year is meaningless to be except as a reference number.

I can understand when people say, “The last year has been bad for me” and not associate it with a number. That means that the last twelve months or so the person hasn’t had much good luck. It’s the number of people who I hear say, “I’m glad 2010 is over. It was a bad year”. It’s 2010’s fault? Bad things started happening on January 1 and you expect them to stop on December 31? I know that it’s just a way that people have of expressing their displeasure with the recent past but I find it less than informative.

I’ve managed to cycle all the way through the month of December for the first time ever since I’ve not been a winter cyclist. It was an especially cold December too. Twenty one degrees Fahrenheit was the coldest weather I was outside cycling in. It’s a lot different cycling in the cold so I had to figure things out. I dress warmly enough now but it took a while to get the outfit correct. And in the low twenties my body responds a lot slower so I have to take it easier. I uses easier to pedal gears than in the warmer weather because it takes more effort to pedal them.

I changed my route to all residential streets that are really quiet in the morning. This means that I have to do three laps to get the same distance of my usual one big loop but I can mostly ride in the middle of the road. That was very important after the first snow especially since it dropped 16-24 inches on us. The roads I ride in the summer are too busy for me to ride anywhere but way to the right and that area is filled with snow and ice these days. If I had to ride on the main roads I’d be way too nervous that I’d get into an accident. I probably wouldn’t do it and have to hit the stationary bike.

I’m going to continue to ride into January and, I hope, beyond. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep my riding in the cold up, since I had never done it before, but after cycling in twenty degree weather for two weeks and cycling just three days after a blizzard I think I can make it all winter. As long as I don’t run into any black ice or some such. That is my biggest concern but so far the roads have been clear.

I do get caught up in all the hope and New Year’s fuss right around this time. All the “Happy New Years”, the “Fresh new year” stuff, and the “Everything is new again” attitude is infectious. Then the reality of January always sets in. It usually takes less than a week for the shininess of the new year to wear off. That’s when people go back to living their lives as they always have. January first is just an arbitrary day and no one is really offering new leases on life then. That’s what bothers me about New Year’s Eve. All the hope that disappears so quickly. I wish it would linger.

Staying up late is also what bothers me about New Year’s Eve. These days it takes me too long to recover from staying up late. If I had a regular nine-to-five job it wouldn’t matter as much. I’ve worked those before and if a person goes into work dragging a bit he can still get things done or there are other co-workers to cover for you. I can even get my paying freelance work done fairly well if I’m tired. After all if I don’t do it no one else will do it for me and I won’t get paid. No, it’s my own artwork and ambition that go out the window when I’m tired.

Being self-motivated is extremely hard when you’re fatigued. That’s why most people give up any artistic or creative ambitions after they take a full time job. It’s hard to see the point of making a drawing, painting, or whatever after working a full day and coming home tired. It’s also hard to see the point of making a drawing, painting, or whatever after staying up until 3 AM and losing half a night’s sleep. If I lose half a night’s sleep on Saturday/Sunday then I won’t be able to get anything done of my own until Wednesday or Thursday. My brain isn’t straightened out until then. “I try to think but nothing happens” as Curly says.

There are some people who hate their jobs and use this “Staying up late” method to get through life. Party all weekend, show up to work exhausted on Monday, never fully recover until Thursday, and then be ready to party on Friday night. It’s not a very efficient method of living and tough to keep up in the long run but I have seen it tried many times. I could never do it myself because I like my brain functioning at a normal level but an awful lot of people just want to shut their brains off. Life can be like that.

Well now I think I’m out of New Year’s musings except to say that my place is a bit of a mess. That blizzard on the day after Christmas messed up our recycling pick up schedule. With Christmas and some end of the year art supply ordering I have a bunch of cardboard boxes lying around that there is no room for in my recycle bin. It’s no big deal but the place needs to be cleaned up a bit. I’m feeling a little hemmed in. Or maybe it’s the disappearing New Year’s hope that’s hemming me in. It’s a confusing life, isn’t it?

I just spent a lot of the morning making a couple of bad drawings bad drawings. I hate when that happens. It’s frustrating. The Law of Averages says that it’s inevitable, says that they can’t all be good, but I sure want them to be. Working on something that comes out dull and uninspired is a downer. But that’s life. Sometimes things don’t work out well as I expect.

I finished a large painting a couple of days earlier. That often makes figuring out what to do next a little bit harder. Even more so since I’m not even sure how the painting came out. It’s a bit of a mystery to me. It’s one of the large acrylic paintings that I’ve been doing this past year but I don’t think I ever really got a feel for this one. Large and in acrylic is a new way of painting for me but I think with the others I’ve done I knew the direction I was going in a bit more. It’s strange because I look at it and wonder what I was thinking. Not in a bad way but almost in a way as if it was painted by someone other than me. I’m oddly disconnected from it.

I didn’t think the figuring out what to do after finishing a large painting part was going to be a problem this time. I was planning on trying out some new magic markers. After writing a previous blog about how I wanted some more magic markers even though I didn’t know what I was going to do with them I actually got more markers. I ordered some ShinHan Touch markers. They are Korean markers that are much like the Japanese Copic markers but cheaper. They were on sale at Dick Blick for only $2.19 a marker compared to $4.87 per Copic marker. So I bought nine markers in various shades of blue. Plus one Copic Sketch marker just to try out. Those ones have a flexible brush-like tip compared to a regular stiff marker tip. I liked it.

Why did I only get blue ones? I wanted to limit my color palette in hopes of better figuring out how to best draw with them. Yet, I wanted a variety of blues with which to draw with. I love color and I really love working with color but when trying a new medium I find it best to start without color. Monochrome means no real color choices. Drawing in all blue can look like there is a lot of color but it’s no different than drawing in all gray as with a pencil. Even drawing in two colors, say blue and yellow, is not really dealing with color as they can be just substitutes for black and white.

Last night I actually made a couple of nice drawings with the markers. I didn’t draw anything new but looked through my library of the scans of my pencil drawings to search for an image I wanted to use. I have done a lot of drawings and a lot of them have never been turned into anything final. So when I want to do something, like figure out a new marker technique, I can go through my drawings, pick one out, use my printer to print it onto a sheet of drawing paper, and then draw right on top of it using it as I would any under-drawing. That way I can concentrate on technique and not have to come up with an image.

The marker drawings I made are small. They are on five by seven inch paper. I didn’t want to go any larger because, in the past, I’ve had no luck finding a finishing technique with markers at large sizes. Marker nibs are small and therefore work best for small drawings. With painting I can scale up my image and choose a larger brush that’s appropriate for the finished size I’d be working at. I can’t do that with markers. They’re generally one size fits all.

I was happy with the two drawings I made last night The key to the technique was a white charcoal pencil. I liked the blues but the drawing didn’t come alive for me until I figured out to go back into it and add highlights and work some of the tones back lighter with a white charcoal pencil. I hadn’t even thought of that when I started.

I continued this morning with a couple more drawings done in the same technique. They came out uninspired and dull. In one case because the scale was wrong. Like I said I was working at a small size but the image was a close up. Too close and too many large open areas. Markers don’t do particularly well with large open areas. It’s not paint which can be laid down with a variety of techniques or laid down with such a thickness that it becomes an object. A large area of marker on paper is just a thin layer pigment. No brush strokes and no presence. Therefore the lesson of marker drawing is to keep the lever of detail high so there are not large open areas.

The second drawing I made today had a different problem. In hindsight it seems to be a dull drawing. The old garbage-in-garbage-out rule. It’s not a terrible image it’s just a bit unresolved and unfocused. I managed to do a good job with the technique but technique can’t save an uninspired drawing. I didn’t really notice it was unfocused when I picked it or thought I could focus it some more but in the end it is a disappointment. And that makes for a disappointing day.

It is amazing how when the creative juices aren’t flowing things feel like they’re crashing down. Especially when I’m still working on things and they’re just not coming out right. Being un-creatively creative make the whole day dull and lifeless. I’m glad most days aren’t like that.

I’ve been a fan of the comic book series “The Walking Dead” for years now. It was recommended to me way back when and I started buying it with issue three. It’s on issue eighty now and I’ve pretty much liked all of them. It’s a comic that I’ve bought monthly (or whenever an issue came out) and it works well in that format. Since it just became a six episode TV show I’ve watched those too and enjoyed them. But what I’ve noticed is that I seemed to have had the same conversation over and over with people about the comic and now I have it about the TV show.

“The Walking Dead” is at first glance a zombie comic. There are a lot of fans of the zombie genre out there and I know a bunch of them but I don’t count myself among their number. I have no particular affection for zombie stories. But “The Walking Dead” isn’t your typical zombie story. It’s the story of what happens after the zombies take over the world.

The main character wakes up in a hospital after the zombie apocalypse, has no idea what has happened, and takes off to try and find his wife and son. When I first read “The Walking Dead” I thought it was going to be a typical quest book as he searches for his family and has to go through all sorts of trials before he finds them. After which the book is pointless. But the writer, Robert Kirkman, surprised me and had the main character find his family within a few issues. That’s when I knew this wasn’t going to be a typical comic.

That is also when I started having my repeated conversation with various people because “The Walking Dead” is in no way your typical zombie comic. First off there is no reason or explanation for the zombie apocalypse. It just happened and the world as we know it has ended. There is no scientist or other authority figure waiting in the wings to explain everything. After all, why would the apocalypse come with an explanation? And there is no one coming to save our cast of characters. There are not even enough people alive to maintain a continuity of civilization. It’s all over. Kaput. Not your normal story.

Secondly Kirkman isn’t interested in zombie lore or rules. They just are. If they bite you then the bite kills you and if you’re not eaten you come back as a zombie. That’s all we know because that’s all the characters have been able to figure out by living through it. But this isn’t enough for a lot of zombie fans I know. They want back story. They want explanations. They want to know how everything fell apart. They want to know what the zombie rules are. Otherwise they say they can’t enjoy the story as much. None of that stuff bothers me and I couldn’t care less so I didn’t quite understand their objections until I heard them over and over. Then it hit me. To a lot of horror fans the rules of any given monster are very important to them.

Most monsters come with rules. Vampires, werewolves, and zombies are the most common but most others do too. People need structure in order to believe in the monster. And to feel safe from it. The world is a crazy, out of control, unsafe place and people don’t want their entertainment to reflect that. People want order even in the world of things that go bump in the night. They want a monster to scare them. Though the unknown is scary in real life it’s not so scary in a movie. If the bogeyman doesn’t fit the definition of a bogeyman then he’s not as scary as the bogeyman. It’s a simple as that. How is a monster supposed to scare you if you don’t know that he’s a monster?

What are a monster’s strengths? What are his weaknesses? Sure I might not be able to defeat the monster but the hero should be able to. Or at least have a chance. What’s the point of a monster that can’t be stopped? It’s not very entertaining if the best the protagonists can hope for is to stay out of the monsters way. Rules. Structure. People want some sort of order in their supernatural worlds. It’s actually hard to scare someone with a movie without order and rules.

Here is one more thing about “The Walking Dead”. The zombies in it aren’t really zombies. They are, in that they’re the living dead but they aren’t, in that they’re not the villains of the book. They zombies are there to represent, and cause, instant death in this new world. It’s other humans and the end of the world in general who are the villains. That’s what zombie fans have a hard time accepting. At least at first. Their favorite villains aren’t the villains of the story when it sure looks like they’re supposed to be. And then rules that define their favorite villains aren’t really important to the story. The zombies get short shrift. I can understand why they find it disappointing.

I, on the other hand, like the lack of zombie back story. I’ve grown to dislike backstory on supernatural monsters because it changes for supposedly stock monsters, vampires, werewolves, and zombies, from franchise to franchise. Even from episode to episode within a series. And all these “Nice” vampires that have popped up in the last decade and a half drive me crazy. I want my monsters to be monsters!

I’ve also noticed that once zombie fans accept that the rules they expect to find in “The Walking Dead” are a little different from their expectations they can relax and enjoy the comic. And now the TV show. So give it a read. And a chance even if it’s not your usual zombie story.

I got a bunch of comics stacked up in my “Read Pile”. I really out to read them. There are actually twelve comics in there but since I only buy two or three a week that’s about a month’s worth of comics. It’s weird but sometimes I can’t read enough comics and there are other times I let them pile up for weeks. I’ve read a few things lately but I’ve been in no hurry to read them all.

I’m still out there on the bicycle. This is the latest in the year I’ve ever ridden. It’s well into December and last year I only rode until the end of November. At the time that was the latest I’d ridden. I never liked riding in the cold but it turns out that if you dress a bit more warmly it isn’t so bad. What a crazy idea.

Two years ago I finally bought a windbreaker and some thin gloves. And then last year I got some long underwear. It’s that thin modern kind that sports people wear these days. That stuff kept me warm all through November but this year I bought a hood/mask and some bicycle gloves to keep me warm in December. I’m not really sure what makes them cycling gloves. They have some leather pads on the palms and the two small fingers are sewn together like a mitten but otherwise they seem like winter gloves. I’ve been able to keep warm riding in the cold but the wind can still be nasty.

I’m trying to ride later into the year because I need my exercise, I like cycling a lot, and I really don’t want to be on the stationary bike. That’s my alternative winter exercise and it is boring. Even though I watch a TV show or movie while I do it it’s still dull and seems pointless. I usually start up with the real bike again in mid-March so that means three and a half months of the stationary bike if I had stopped at the end of November.

I cycled for the first time ever in some snow flurries. It was a little disconcerting. It was the wind that was the real trouble though. The wind didn’t make it too cold because I had to work so had to ride against it. I was tired when my ride was over. I might change my route too. I’ll stop doing my big loop and stay closer to home and ride a couple of smaller loops. I don’t like riding laps but the roads will be quieter, the hills smaller, and I’ll be closer to home if I get into trouble. Let’s see how long I can keep up the outside rides.

For some reason I haven’t been able to watch any movies lately. It’s weird. I have a bunch of them that I want to watch but haven’t been in the mood. I’ve watched or had on TV shows but have had no interest in putting on a movie. Maybe because I don’t actually want to sit down and watch something for an hour and forty minutes. A TV show is only forty minutes and that’s if I actually don’t get up in the middle of it to draw or some such.

The only movie I’ve actually sat down and watched in the last two months is “Barbarians at the Gate”. That’s an old HBO movie about the story of the hostile takeover of Nabisco in the 80’s with James Garner. Why that one? I’m not sure except I wanted to see it again. I always liked it. I’ve also been watching old episodes of Garner’s “The Rockford Files”. That’s a good show that holds up well. A classic of the 70’s even.

Another show that I watch is “Ancient Aliens”. I only have that one on in the background though because it is so ridiculous. There were six episodes in the first season and I think there will be that many again in the second and I can’t believe they’ve stretched that much nothing into all those episodes. Every show has a bunch of talking heads speculating on how there could have been aliens on Earth back in ancient times. They don’t have one piece of hard proof but that doesn’t stop them from making up endless stories because they happen to think an old carving looks like a spaceship. I sometimes find myself saying, “Oh, c’mon” out loud and having to turn off the show as it gets to nutty for me to take.

The winter means the end of street photography season for me. I haven’t made it down to NYC since October because not only does it get too cold out to comfortably take pictures but the random people on the street to take pictures of dwindle in numbers. And they all start to look the same bundled up in coats, scarves, and hats. The winter is the time to make some of the photos I took in the summer into something finished but I haven’t had the inclination to do that yet. Maybe later. Winter hasn’t even actually started yet.

I’ve been writing my comic strips in bunches these days. For most of the past year I’ve written one or maybe two a night but for the last couple of weeks I’ve written three or four of them in a day/night. I don’t know why and I don’t know if it’s good or bad I just know that’s how I’ve been doing them. Thursday mornings have also become my mornings to work on them and finalize five of them. I used to finish one a night or get them all done Sunday morning or afternoon while watching football but somehow that didn’t work out and I settled on one morning.

I’ve officially sworn off reading any “Top Ten” lists of anything. Or top whatever number. They are just so dumb, arbitrary, and a waste of my time. The last one I read was so stupid that I couldn’t take it anymore. I won’t bother to mention which one it was for fear of having to relive the moment but when I got to the end of the little article I was insulted that the author made me waste my life by reading his list. Most top ten lists I’ve ever read offer no insight into whatever their subject matter is and reveal more about the author of the list than anything else. I’ve decided that life will be better without ever reading a top ten list again. Just though you should know.