Radiant Comics

Yesterday I spend a good portion of my Saturday afternoon arranging my pens, pencils, markers, and brushes. It all started because I bought some new pen holders. I bought a pack of four of them. I actually thought I was buying four marker holders, as I recently bought a similar marker holder, but it turned out that the pen holders I bought were too small to hold markers. At least too small to hold Copic markers and other art markers that size.

First of all I already have about ten different marker, pen, pencil, and brush holders that hold hundreds of my art supplies. They were actually a little bit crowded and it’s tough to get stuff out of them. I ignore the problem as often as not. So I decided that since I have these four new pen holders I may as well organize all my stuff. It should be easy. Famous last words.

Although the new penholders are too big for Copic markers they do fit Sharpie (and their type) markers. That was good. I have a set of about 36 regular Sharpies, 36 extra fine point Sharpie markers, 36 Bic Mark-It markers, 12 Metallic Bits, 24 Amazon markers and various other odds and ends markers. Each of the new pen holders holds 96 markers so I split up all the Sharpie-types into two of the new holders. That was the easy part. They were already organized.

Next I dove into my tangle of brushes and dip pens. I have two spinning circular pen holders plus a square brush holder that have been sitting on my side table since the 1990s. They have a lot of stuff in them. Too much stuff to easily grab something from that mess.

They key to organizing the pens and brushes turned out to be separating the long handled brushes from the sort handles brushes. I didn’t even realize there were so may short handled brushes in the holder. The long handled brushes were leaning over the short handled ones and covering them up. They were all supposed to be straight up and down but there were a lot of diagonal ones.

I used one of the new pen holders to put all of the short handled brushes in. It turns out that I had somewhere around fifty of them. I would have never guessed that. Especially since about half of them are busted up old watercolor brushes that got ruined, over the years, by the India ink that I use with them. I hated to throw them out and eventually developed my “Busted Brush” technique with them so it’s good that I still have them. The other half are random brushes that I bought over the years.

I have about forty long handled brushes that I use for oil and acrylic on canvas painting. They are mostly flats and duplicates in size that are in all different states of wear. Since I’m planning on making a few acrylic on canvas paintings this summer these ones will get some use.

The brush holder that these ninety or so brushes were in looks like it was meant to hold about fifty brushes. I had long and short handled brushes doubled up in some on the brush holes. No wonder it was such a mess.

The two spinning circular pen holders were the next ones to be organized. They have a lot of stuff stuck in them and they hold all the odd shaped things. The holes that the pens go in get larger as they go away from the center so there is room in them for big barelled things. Things like the four pallet knives and two architect’s scales that I have. They can’t go anywhere else.

Around the inside edge in the smaller circular holders I put all of my dip pens. There are the ones that I have to dip in ink to draw with. Being mostly a brush guy I’ve never used them a lot over the years but I also had a hard time getting to them. They were all lost as they were mixed in haphazardly with brushes and everything else. Now I can easily reach them. Maybe I’ll even use them!

As I dug through all my pens I even discovered a couple that I had forgotten. They are two “Drawing Pens” (from the 1990s) that are more like fountain pens. They both take ink cartridges of which I have none so I cleaned then up and ordered some fountain pen ink cartridges. I’m curious to see if they still work. All cleaned up they should. I remember the one pen always clogging on me. I have since learned that it was probably the drawing ink that I was using in it. Fountain pen ink is thinner and might work better in the pen.

I have a few empty marker holders now but I might still have to get a new marker holder. The empty marker holders are from the 1990s and they don’t quite fit Copic markers (I had some Sharpies in them). They’re made for 1980s to 1990s Ad Markers which were round rather than oval or square like the Copic markers. The oval Copics sort of fit in them but not really.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I have been reviving some old and dried out Copic markers and using Teflon Tape to fix the seal on their caps so Now I have extra markers that I have to put somewhere. I have all of my “Active” and most used markers on a shelf I built on the left side of my drawing table but I think I have to improve that shelf. It was built in two or three stages (and widths) over the years so I think I have to rebuild it in one stage with one width. That way I can fit more markers on it. Maybe this summer. After all I am just about to add more markers to the collection.

It was accidentally buying pen holders instead of marker holders that got me started on this organization journey. I didn’t even realize that I needed to get my pens, brushes, and markers in order but now that they are I think that I was ignoring them for years. Now I look over on that table with satisfaction. I can look at the tools and get ideas of what I want to make with them. That’s a good feeling.

It’s a Sunday afternoon (April 23, 2023) and I’m feeling in a nostalgic mood so I’m going to watch an episode of “Friends” and write a walkthrough. It looks like I’ve haven’t watched any episodes since my last walkthrough so I’m on Season Six and Episode Seventeen. “The One With Unagi.” I’m glad to be writing about this one because I remember it as one of my favorites. We’ve got a lot of crazy Ross in this one.

It first ran on February 24, 2000. Let me check my calendar to see what I was doing on that day. It looks like I only have one thing written for that day and it’s that I worked on some animated gifs for a company named Uproar. Though the next day (a Friday?) was a friends wedding. I also have a note on my calendar that says “Ed got fired.” I assume that’s my friend Ed but I have no idea where he got fired from. And I played touch football the following Saturday. That may have been one of the last times I did that. Let’s start the show.

It starts with them in Central Perk and Ross is saying, “Remember when I had a monkey? What was I thinking?”. I’ve always loved this reference to Season One because I always hated Ross’s monkey. There were never any funny bits with it and it was such a dumb sitcom thing to do. I glad they acknowledged it. Now on with the show.

I completely forgot this was the period when Joey was working as a waiter in Central Perk. He’s complaining about tips because he needs new headshots. He’s broke and wants to get paid for medical experiments (the start of the first plot). Gunther even chews Joey out for talking instead of working. But he’s incorrigible and here comes the theme sng.

Rachel and Phoebe arrive at the coffee shop (Phoebe was already there in the opening so time must have shifted) and tell stories of the glories of their new self defense class. Ross is skeptical about their skills and so Ross tells them about his karate days and the concept of total awareness: Unagi. Hence the title of the episode (and the second plot). Now it’s the girls turn to be skeptical. Ross is at his best in this scene. The hand gesture that goes along with Unagi is brilliant.

Chandler enters and needs a late Valentine’s gift for Monica. Joey makes a crotchless panty comment that lands with a thud but is funny for us. The kicker is that Monica and Chandler promised to make each other gifts. As the plot unfolds we’ll find that neither is very good at making things. That’s our third plot.

Now Chandler is back as his apartment. He’s making about the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen with two pencils, a paper cup, and a wire coat hanger. It’s a no go. Monica walks in. She seems nervous but plays it cool. Maybe even a little over the top. Of course it’s revealed that she’s made nothing for Chandler.

New scene with Joey at the hospital looking to volunteer for a study. There is a $2000 identical twin study but Joey has no twin. He’ll still hit on the nurse/receptionist though. Not his lucky day.

Quickly we goto Ross hiding in the hallway and looking to surprise Rachel and Phoebe. His doing the double hand claw and shouting “Danger” never fails to crack me up. Of course the women are startled. Ross saying “Unagi” with the twisting double finger point at his own head cracks me up every time too. Crazy Ross rules. Rachel and Phoebe are flabbergasted. Top flight scene.

Back to an audition with Joey where we get to hear his inner monologue of him wishing he had a twin. The camera pulls back and we see a group of guys, about his size and shape, in a matching leather jackets. This is the fruition of the first plot as Joey tries to convince everybody that a random stranger is his twin. There is a lot of good silly in this episode.

Now we’re at Ross’s apartment as he is bringing in his laundry. Chandler walks in. Ross sensed it was him. Unagi. Chandler is uninterested. He’s looking for anything that looks homemade that he can give to Monica. Chandler leaves empty handed and then Phoebe and Rachel jump out of the curtain and yell “Danger!” Ross gives out a high pitched scream. A nice surprise for the audience too.

A new scene has Chandler searching his own bedroom for something to give Monica. A nice callback to the crotchless panty joke and then he finds a random mix tape. By the way, mix tapes in the year 2000 were not a thing anymore. We had moved on to mix CDs by then. He gives it to Monica but he has no idea what songs are on the tape.

Monica gives him a present in return but it’s one of Phoebe’s sock rabbits (they were mentioned in the beginning of the episode but I didn’t mention them. I forgot about this callback to them). Chandler knows than Monica didn’t make them so she’s busted and confesses. Monica is feeling so guilty that she promises Chandler the world. He doesn’t confess and accepts.

Now we’ve moved forward in time and see Monica and Chandler in bed after promises were kept. They are both happy and glowing. She’s even making him more promises.

The stranger (Carl) who Joey wants to play his twin walks into Monica and Chandler’s apartment and casually gets a soda as if he’s Joey. The two are stunned. Joey storms in as the not-twin gets his, “How you doing?” catch phrase wrong. Joey explains his crazy scheme. I love this crazy scheme. It’s so dumb that it’s genius.

Phoebe and Rachel are in Phoebe’s apartment. This has to be more Unagi stuff. They see Ross’s tall hair sticking up over the back of a chair as he hides to ambush them. I guess they ambushed him as in the next cut Ross is face down on the ground with the women on top of him trying to get him to say they have Unagi.

Now they’re going to wrap up the Joey plot as he and Carl show up for the twin study. Of course their ploy fails. It was obvious but I still found it funny.

Next Chandler returns to his apartment and Monica has a candlelight meal set up for him. Chandler is trying to get her to stop because he feels guilty. Monica puts on the tape and they dance to “The Way You Look Tonight.” Here comes the payoff!

Suddenly we hear the distinctive voice of Janice, Chandler’s old girlfriend, on the tape saying she likes the way he looks every night. It becomes obvious to Monica that she’s been had and Chandler didn’t make that tape for her for Valentine’s Day.

Here comes a goofy scene with Ross in a self defense class wanting to know how to beat up two women. It doesn’t go well for him.

Now Chandler is apologizing. It’s not going well for him either but it is funny and Chandler makes some headway. Except the tape is still playing and here comes Janice’s voice again. Roll credits

The credit scene is Ross trying to attack Phoebe and Rachel again but it turns out not to be them. Phoebe and Rachel do have a nice view of it from Central Perk as Ross has to run away.

Let me check to see what was cut out of this episode. Nothing. Nothing was added for the extended DVD cut so nothing had to be cut out for the HD edition.

I don’t even have to check what I rated this one a decade ago when I rated all the episodes. This was a five to of five stars for me. I especially liked the Unagi plot but they all amused me. There is a reason Unagi became a meme. It’s funny stuff.

Front Cover Photo From Auction

I bought my first ever slabbed comic book this week. For those of you who don’t know: a slabbed comic is the slang term for sending out a comic book to a professional grading company where they grade your book and encase the comic in plastic. The plastic is the “Slab.”

This service first started around 25 years ago. At first it was mostly for expensive comic books. Before slabbing if you had a high end comic that you wanted to sell then you and the buyer would have to agree on what the grade was of that comic. That wasn’t always easy when a slight change in grade would swing the price hundreds if not thousands of dollars. The seller might see the book as a higher grade than the buyer since that would get him more money. Conversely the buyer might see it as a lower grade to spend less money. You can see where a third party grader would come in handy.

I generally don’t buy high end comics and therefor haven’t had much interest in slabbed books. But these days people even get new books right off the shelf graded. I think it costs around $25 a book (with shipping included) to get a book slabbed. So if you can spend $4 on a “Hot” new book, spend another $25 to get it graded, and get it back before it cools off then you might be able to get $100 for that $4 comic book. Of course it has to be a good grade. It better be a 9.8 out of 10 for a brand new comic or you’re wasting your time.

This has led to a lot of people speculating on new comics. If you can guess what the hot books are going to be and get them graded fast then you can make plenty of money. This is called flipping.

I’ve also noticed people (I’ve seen them on YouTube mostly) slabbing books for other reasons. Sometimes it looks like a craft project to me. They like to get the book autographed so the signature can be officially verified and then graded and slabbed. I’ve even seen people open up a slab to get another signature on it. Then it has to be re-slabbed.

I’ve seen people get books slabbed so that if they die their loved ones will have an easier time selling the book. They’ve actually said that on YouTube. They want to keep their books until they die but they also know that a comic book collection can be a burden on whoever inherits it. If the expensive books are already graded and slabbed that’ll make things easier on whoever sells them.

Another reason I think people get books slabbed is just to be right. They see a comic that’s in really good shape, they think it can get a high grade, so they send it off to be graded, and then have a lot of satisfaction when the book comes back with a high grade. It’s fun to be proven right. I don’t discount that as motivation.

I wanted to get a slabbed book as a conversation piece. I have a big comic book collection so why not get a slabbed book? That way when someone asks what a graded and slabbed book is I can show them.

Back Cover Photo From Auction

The problem I ran into was figuring out what comic book I wanted to buy. I decided it was too much effort to send a comic I already owned off to be slabbed and it would be easier to buy one already slabbed. So I looked on eBay.

I can’t even tell you how many years I’ve been actively looking to buy a slabbed book. Probably somewhere around six years. The cheapest price I could see for a random slabbed book on eBay was around $35 to $40. That’s with shipping so the seller wasn’t even making much profit off the book.

Most of the books I saw for $35 to $40 looked like failed speculation books to me. They were issues of random series, mostly indie comics at that price, that the seller thought might be hot at some time. Except that time passed and they never got hot.

I kept my eye on that low end market for years but never bought anything.The reason was that whenever I got interested in a particular comic I always came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to pay $35-$40 for a $4 comic book. I’d rather but a bunch of $4 comic books. I’m more of a comic book reader than a collector.

This week I finally pulled the trigger and bought a $36 slabbed book. I saw a comic that seemed worth it to me. It’s the Skybound fifth anniversary printing of the first issue of a comic book named “Cloned.”
Most people probably haven’t even heard of the series let alone are familiar with this printing that was only available in a box set sold at the San Diego ComicCon back in 2015. I wasn’t even aware of this version of it.

What sold me on getting this slabbed comic as a conversation piece is that it had a nice cover and was hard to get. The cover is a wraparound cover, with art on the front and back, with art by the series artist Juan Jose Ryp. I bought the series back in the early 2010s when it came out so this was a cool version of something I already liked.

It’s not easy to find, not because it’s popular, but because nobody really cares about it. That and it was part of a boxed set. The set itself sells for around $100 so why would anyone break a set up? I imagine it’s because maybe an issue or two of the more popular comic books in the set could be sold for $50 if they were slabbed and got a high grade. So maybe a few people broke open a sent and sent them out to be graded.

I had my eye on this particular auction of “Clone” for a couple of months before I finally pulled the trigger and I’m glad I did. Seeing the cover in person I really like it. There is a lot of cool detail in the drawing. So much so that I was looking at it with a magnifying glass. Cool.

As a coda to this piece as I was thinking about writing this and wondering if I could even find this comic in its un-slabbed form (not in the box set). So I looked it up on eBay. I couldn’t find it before I bought this slabbed one but sure enough I saw this issue plus the “Sketch Variant” version of the cover in a single auction. The sketch variant is a look at the pencils in their uncolored form. I put it on my watchlist and soon after the seller offers me a deal on the comics. So I bought those two comics for $15 shipping included.

Now I have the raw and regular version, the sketch variant version, and a slabbed version of the same “Clone” comic. That’s some conversation piece.

Great Gatsby Logo Sketch

I’ve got a lot of jumbled thoughts about my Great Gatsby illustrated project that I’ve been working on for over a year. I have a lot of illustrations done for it plus the basic design of the book but still no cover. I was stuck at that point for a lot of the first two months of 2023 but then I worked up some more ideas and got going again. These past few weeks I worked up even more ideas and it’s going to take me a while to figure them all out.

Despite not having a cover yet I decided to work on a logo for the book. Usually I, like almost everybody else these days, would make the logo digitally in one of the graphic design programs. But this time I decided to hand draw a logo or at least hand draw a logo sketch. So that’s what I did. I drew some sketches and eventually came up with one I liked.

That’s when I decided to go digital with it to finish the logo. I scanned in the sketch and used Adobe Illustrator to redraw the logo. I got three letters in and hated it. As often happens with art I lost the energy of the pencil sketch when trying to make a finished piece of it. Sometimes it’s that a pencil sketch is more energetic in general with all its searching lines but often it’s that the idea for the logo just wasn’t that good to begin with. I haven’t given up on it totally but I have to work it out.

The next thing I got done was a few drawings for interior illustrations. I changed up the style on them quite a bit from what I had already done and it led me to some new ideas and images. I have a “Gatsby in the pool” one, an almost abstract cheering figure, two women on pillars, and three drawings of wine glasses with geometric shapes that seem to remind people of stained glass.

Though I got quite a few of these drawn and some even inked I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to color them. I colored a couple of the wine glass ones in Illustrator but the end result didn’t thrill me. They were just okay.

Photo of Gatsby Painting

Today I was looking at an art supply website that had some markers on sale. I was trying to figure out if I should buy some of these to add to my collection of markers when I decided to check out what else was on sale. I saw that they had some stretched canvas on sale and an idea struck me. I am going to buy some of the 24×36 inch canvases and paint the wine glass images on them. That is going to be my painting project for the summer. I can picture how I’m going to do them and that’s always a good thing. Now I just have to order the canvases.

Another Gatsby thing I got going this week is a bunch of little thumbnails for spot illustrations. For those who don’t know a spot illustration is a small and simple illustration. It takes up only a small portion of the page and is usually nested in the text.

The thumbnail drawings I did for this are really small. Keeping the drawings small and drawing them with ink means that I’m just working on ideas and not getting caught up in making them “Good Drawings.” That’s always the danger when trying to crank out ideas. You can get caught up in trying to make the idea into something look like a good drawing instead of quickly moving on to the next idea and worrying about making it a good drawing when you settle on what you actually want to draw.

Gatsby Thumbnail Sketches

These thumbnails were even smaller than my usual thumbnails. In my inkbook, which is 5.5×8 inches, I usually draw nine small drawings on a page. In my Gatsby sketchbook, which is 5×7 inches, I drew about 25 drawings on a page. They are really small but that forced me to think about a simple image. I filled up three pages with drawings and I think I ended up with about ten little drawings that I can turn into spot illustrations.

Last month I wrote a piece about getting started on Gatsby illustrations again using a Surrealist automatic drawing method. I got a few pieces done in that style but even those I have yet to figure out how to color and finish. That seems my main roadblock at this time. At the beginning of the year I bought a bunch of new watercolors but I’ve only played around with them. I haven’t made any finished paintings with them yet. Being that watercolor has never been one of my main mediums I’ve never really had a finished watercolor style anyway. Maybe it’s about time I developed one.

One Gatsby thing I’ve wanted to do since last year is a lot of portraits. At one point in the book the narrator, Nick Caraway, goes over a list of names of some of the people who showed up to Gatsby’s parties. Since I draw a lot of faces, especially cartoon art cards, I thought it would be a cool idea to draw small portraits of all the guests. They could be wacky and weird faces as I like to draw.

The main problem with this idea is that there are about seventy five names on the list. That’s a lot of faces to draw. It’s not that I think I can’t do it but it’s that I have so many other ideas I want to get done first. Like all the stuff I’ve mentioned here. I even tried to leverage my cartoon art card faces by using them as underdrawings for the new faces but I haven’t gotten any of them done yet.

That’s a pretty long list of Gatsby stuff I have under way. It’ll probably take me months to get it all done. But that beats having no ideas. That wasn’t fun.

Art Cards

It’s April 4, 2023 as I write this and I just finished up all of my “Drifting and Dreaming” comic strips for 2024. Fifty two strips. They run here on Sundays. That’s pretty far ahead and I’m glad to have them done. I’ve been doing the strip for over a decade and since I don’t make any money at it I have no idea how long I’ll keep doing it. It’s a struggle to get any kind of creative work done so I’m always happy to finish something. I may not have much in life but at least I can get some art done.

For the last few years I’ve been getting the strips done during the first six months of the year and then getting my “Message Tee” comic done during the second half of the year. Sometimes I draw new T-shirt people for my Message Tee comic and sometimes I recolor and repurpose old T-Shirt people drawings. We’ll see about this year.

For “Drifting and Dreaming” I always draw new stuff. I make the strip by writing and drawing what I call my “Cartoon Art Cards.” An art card is a drawing made on a baseball card size piece of paper. Artists sell and trade these drawings. I use them to make comic strips.

I make all sorts of art cards but the cartoon ones consist of me drawing a strange looking character from the shoulders up and then writing something pithy that I letter in a word balloon above his or her head. Usually they’re talking directly to the reader. Sometimes I write the word balloon first and then draw the character. It all depends on what I feel like doing at the time.

My method is that I make a quick sketch of the character in pencil and then draw it again with a black marker. For many years I didn’t even bother with the pencil sketch and went right to ink and that made for some really weird drawings. But then I got bored with the repetition of that and changed things up by using a pencil first.

After I draw the character in ink I color the drawing with markers. I usually use my Copic marker set but sometimes, just for a change of pace, I use Sharpies or some random other marker sets I have. These cards are small (2.5×3.5 inches) so the color is pretty simple . Fancy markers are really necessary.

Two of the three panels are cartoon art cards but the center panel is a regular art card. That means it’s a drawing, often a color drawing, with no words on it. It’s a play on the set up, pause, punchline structure of a comic strip. The center card/panel with no words is the pause.

There is also a small story told in words at the bottom of the strip. The Middle Story. I write that story in just a few sentences. I found out a year or so after I started this strip that what I was doing was called “Micro-Writing.” I didn’t know it had a name.

The first thing I do when writing that part is to write the “Middle Story” end line. “Toast some bread for the Middle Story” or some such. After writing ten of those I pick ten names and type those in. I like to name the people I write these short tales about and so it helps to get all the names out of the way first. After the Middle Story and names part I write the actual micro-story.

I make these art cards and finished strips in sets of ten. I write, draw, and color ten cards and then scan them. After that I do ten more. Since there are 52 Sundays in a year I need 104 cartoon art cards and 52 regular art cards to get my strips done for the year. That usually takes a few months. It takes up to eight hours to get ten cards done.

After I have them all finished in their physical form is when I start writing them. Ten at a time. But I don’t write them with any of the art cards in place. The writing is done by itself with the art section kept blank. It’s only after I finish writing ten of them that I put the art in place.

I have a binder with sleeves in it that hold all of the art cards. The same kind of binder (with sleeves that hold nine cards) that people keep their Pokemon cards in. Except mine holds original art. I use little pieces of post-it notes to keep track of which cards that I’ve used. I pick a card, lets say card 798, put a post-it note on the card sleeve over the card, find the digital scan of that card, and then paste that scan in place in the final document with the writing in it. I do this with three cards and I have a finished strip.

First I pick the cartoon art cards on the left and right. The figures on them are almost always facing the middle. When I draw the cards I make three out of the ten face left, another three face right, and the final four are facing the center. The ones facing the center can go on either the left or right but the other ones are always facing the center.

After I get all three cards pasted into the file with the writing I repeat the process nine more times. Once ten of them are done I move on to the next ten. After all fifty two are done the last thing I have to do is output them as their own files to be posted.

I have a macro/Photoshop action that I use to output them. I hit a button and it saves a strip as a jpeg to be posted. It also gives me an opportunity to name the file. I always put the name of the strip, its number, and the year/month/day that it’s going to be posted. I keep a calendar open to keep track of the dates.

So that’s the process. It takes a while but it’s spread out over time. I like to make some art cards over the year but sometimes after cramming it all into a few months I get burned out. Maybe I’ll make a few this summer. We’ll see.