Radiant Comics

Way back in my freshman year of college I had a typography teacher, Tom, who had a running joke with the photo teacher about how Tom hated photography. He treated photography with no respect. I found this a bit extreme so one day I brought up the subject with Tom. It turned out he really did like photography. And he hated it. More precisely he hated that fact that cameras were so easy to operate, this was 1984, that everyone who had one thought they were a photographer. After being forced to endure endless piles of bad snapshots from friends and acquaintances he just couldn’t take it anymore. It was an offense to his senses.

Tom’s solution was to start saying he dislikes photography in general. He took this tact because of its blanket immunity. You see, if you tell someone their snapshots are boring and badly taken they get insulted. Plus they get mad at you for your “rudeness”. After all, they’ve got a camera and think they’re photographers.

Tell a person their cooking isn’t very good and they will usually admit that they are not much of a cook. People know cooking takes practice and skill. Tell someone that their quadratic equations are bad and they’ll tell you that they’re not a mathematician. But everyone with a camera thinks they’re a photographer. And can be oblivious to the fact they aren’t. These are the same people who see the photos of a photographer who has some skill and say, “You have a really good camera”. In many peoples’ minds it’s the camera that takes the picture and not the person behind the camera.

Enter the age of digital photography. I see more digital cameras around than I ever did film cameras. No film to load, buy, or process so you can get instant results. People love instant gratification. But unlike almost all snapshots taken with film most digital pictures only exist on computer screens. With film getting snapshots printed was part of the developing process. With digital it’s an extra step. So how do you to show people your digital snapshots? With photo sharing services such as Flickr.com.

A photo sharing service is a web site that lets you upload your photos to their servers and invite friends, family, and even strangers to come view them. Not a bad thing in and of itself but now everyone with a digital camera invites you to go see their photos online. Their uncropped, unedited, untouched-up, snapshots. They’re as painful to look at as as pile of film snapshots. Here are a few of the usual suspects:

Peoples’ heads in the middle of the photo instead of at the top. These are by people who really don’t know what they’re doing. This is the first thing you learn. There is a lot of bad composition in snapshots and this is where it starts.

The “snapshot lean”. Most cameras have pretty wide lenses these days but a lot people don’t know that so when asked to pose for a photo they lean in to the person next to them. People stacked like teepee poles. The photographer has to tell them to straighten up. Not always easy task for the casual photographer though. I too have plenty of teepee people but I edit them out.

Bad composition is the most common thing in mediocre snapshots. I could go on and on about it. But I’ll spare you.

Pictures taken two seconds apart posted right next to each other. Edit one out. We don’t need nearly identical pictures except someone’s head is turned three degrees in the second one. Pick the best one and go with it.

Every picture taken from the exact same angle. Camera at head level from about six to eight feet away. Mix it up. Drop to a knee and then take the picture. Shoot from waist level. Shot from ground level. Shoot from over head. Anything would be a change from big headed, little legged, barrel distorted people.

I could ramble on even more about the faults I find but instead here are a few simple tips.

Only post two out of three of your pictures. This will teach you to look at them closer and edit out the mediocre ones.

I do find it odd that the first thing everyone brags about is how many megapixels their camera has and then they are perfectly happy posting the pics on a site that uses a tiny fraction of those pixels. So anyway: crop. Everybody’s camera has at least three megapixels and most sites only post them at about half a megapixel so try using the cropping tool to create a better composition.

And when you crop use whatever aspect ratio you want. Don’t stick with what the camera gives you. If you think it looks better as a tall skinny photo then make it so. Free yourself from the HD and SD aspect ratios. Play around. Make your own “panoramas” just by cropping out the top and bottom. You have plenty of pixels. Get rid of some.

Anyway, hardly anyone will listen to these tips because most people just want their pictures to be easy. Not win awards. Doing nothing but uploading unedited photos is the easy thing.

I know, you’re saying, “Simple solution. If somebody send you a link to their photos just don’t look at ’em”. That’s solid advice and I usually follow it. But then sometimes people what to discuss their photos and know where mine are posted (nowhere, I hate the usability of these sites, but that’s another rant) so occasionally I gotta look. But if I don’t please do not get insulted. I don’t get insulted when you don’t want to hear my bad singing.

It’s almost football season. The NFL back in action. And that means it’s almost fantasy football season. For those of you not in the know, fantasy football is when a bunch of guys get together and divide up the players in the NFL via a draft. After you’ve drafted your team a player’s performance for the week counts as happening on your fantasy football team. That is: if I have Peyton Manning on my fantasy football team and he throws a touchdown pass on Sunday that TD is scored by my fantasy football team. Score more points than your opponent for the week and you win the game. It’s a lot of fun.

Right now I’m preparing for my leagues draft by analyzing all the players performances from last year and trying to figure out how they will do this year. It’s a bit of a fool’s errand, as is most sports prognosticating, but I find it fun. I made a bunch of charts of players and how they scored last year and how they compare to everyone else from last year. Now I’ll try to rank them in what order I want to draft them in. It’s a tall task because, with a few exceptions, there is little difference between the stats. Sure the number two guy is way better than the number twenty guy but the difference between numbers thirty and thirty one is minimal. It’s easy to pick the stars but most of the league is just regular players. The key to winning is finding some regular players who will play like stars. That’s easier said then done.

There are endless magazines and websites devoted to fantasy football drafts and tons of “experts” giving out advice in said mags and sites. These guys love going out on limbs and trying to pick the regular players who are about to turn into stars. They are hardly ever right but it’s only fantasy football so no one holds it against them. After all no one ever looks at who they picked last year. It seems like every year there is a consensus “breakout player” before the season. Last year it was Dolphin running back Ronnie Brown. He didn’t break out. Maybe this year. I’d say the experts are about one out of three with their consensus breakout players. The year before it was Bengals QB Carlson Palmer. They were right about that but I didn’t pay attention and draft him because they got it wrong the year before that. I’m not even sure who that three year ago player was. Might have been Matt Hasselbeck (solid QB but a miss fantasy wise).

Just as with real NFL team injuries can kill a fantasy football team. If your number one draft pick goes down you are in serious trouble. Two years ago, for a couple of games, my top five draft picks were all out with injury. I didn’t do much winning that season. It was quite a challenge to even field a team for a couple of weeks. Yet it was still fun to try. After all I don’t have millions of dollars at stake.

Luck is a huge part of fantasy football. I’d say 60% skill and 40% luck. You need the skills to spot players on the rise, know when to play them, and most importantly know when to give up on a player even though you like him. But that 40% luck is huge. League winners usually end up with a couple of players that were picked up in the middle to late rounds of the draft who played like first rounders for a year. Guys it was impossible to predict would do so well. Still, you fell like a genius when you’ve got those guys on your team. Hey, not everyone can be Einstein. I’ll take what I can get.

Whew. I finally got started again today. I began work on four small 8×10 inch acrylic paintings. I always work on four at a time so I can move on to another as the paint dries on the freshest one. That way I keep limber and keep moving. I like working on multiple things. It helps me concentrate.

It feels good to get started on the four because I know I’ll finish them. Lately I have been busy making drawings and such but I haven’t finished anything. For me finishing a drawing isn’t the same as finishing a piece of artwork because a drawing is the means. A print or painting is the ends. That’s where the art takes place. I like drawings because they’re the guts of a piece of art but I find satisfaction in the finishing.

In order to finish a painting I have to have a good idea of what it is going to look like in the end. In the beginning that is. You see, it’s in the beginning I have to be able to envision the painting and then work towards that vision. Putting paint on a canvas with no idea of where I want to go doesn’t work for me. Some people may be able to pull it off but I can’t. I need the drawings. That is where the envisioning is done. That’s where I lay down the trail for my paintings to follow.

My problem wasn’t an odd one. It was a problem of having too much vision. Or maybe just seeing all of the same things over and over. I was finishing drawings but there was a sameness to my process. I knew what the finished painting would look like as I completed the drawing. That was before I even got anywhere near the painting process. At times I have a tendency to over plan my work so I purposefully leave some wiggle room in my decision making so I can find surprises in the final steps of painting. Recently I could see the surprises coming so clearly they weren’t surprises. I was boring myself. Not a good place to be.

So I tasked myself with finding new ways to paint. That is trickier than it sounds. I paint the way I do because that’s what interests me. I don’t have money or fame to motivate me to paint I just have my own interest in painting. I’ve gone down other paths and painted other ways but usually found them lacking. If a new approach to painting doesn’t interest me than I won’t paint. But the same path gets dull after a while too. Even if it goes to a pleasant place. Hence no finished paintings. Some half finished ones though. I guess they have their value.

So I thought about it, paced, distracted myself, made drawings, and worked for a living. That’s been going on for many weeks now. I even started a couple of projects including a series of faces in ink and some drawing for new prints. I haven’t been idle. But I finally just started to paint today. I couldn’t fret over it any more. I don’t even care if they turn out bad. They’re kinda new and messy and lack my normal orderliness but what the hell. We’ll see.

My vision might not be as clear but isn’t that what I wanted? I believe so. I don’t know the exact direction these pieces are going in. They’re not a radical departure in any way but they are different enough. Different enough for me to have a vision of what I want them to be but the vision is a little vague and quite blurry. Nothing is in focus yet. But that’s what’s keeping me interested. Trying to hone that focus until it’s razor sharp. It’s all about the process, baby.

Oh, let me tell you a story. A story about sitting in Bryant Park in the rain. Actually there is no story. I just like, “Oh, let me tell you a story” as an opening line. I need to amuse myself sometimes. Anyway, I was sitting in Bryant Park in the rain on Wednesday morning from about 9:15 AM until 9:45 AM. I was keeping dry under one of the large table umbrellas they have in the park so it’s not like I was getting rained on. So this isn’t an “I got caught in the rain and soaked to the bone” story. Those all end the same anyway. With the participant all wet. So who wants to hear another of those? Not me. I’m snobby like like that.

It’s my habit when I go into NYC to work or to relax that I take a little time and sit in Bryant Park. Maybe draw a bit, maybe take some photos, and maybe just sit. There are tables and chairs in the park so this facilitates sitting and drawing pretty well. Do you know what doesn’t facilitate drawing? Rain. That’s right you heard it here first. Even under the cover of umbrellas paper gets damp and even wet. So when it’s raining there is only sitting going on.

This past spring when I was also in the park as it was raining (passing showers the weatherman said) the park was really crowded. It was in the afternoon and more people were out for lunch when a shower hit. I couldn’t even get a seat that time but managed to stand under a big table umbrella to keep dry. Many others were crowded under many umbrellas. That shower lasted half an hour and I didn’t get to draw that day either. Took a few photos but not from a lot of angles. Just the “Portrait of Park From Under Umbrella” angle. It’s a classic.

Wednesday I was easily able to get a seat because of the early hour and because this was no passing shower. It had been raining for most of the morning. And then a thunder storm that hit. Well, at least there was a little thunder maybe not a full blown “thunder storm”. Usually when thunder is out and about I am inside so it was quite odd not to be. According to the “count the seconds between lightning and thunder” method the lightning was five to seven miles away but that didn’t make it seem any safer as I sat under my umbrella. Lightning just seemed to appear in the air.

There were forty story buildings on all sides of me (Bryant Park isn’t large and I was at its edge) so I guessed that I wasn’t in any real danger from lightning but what do I know? Seventy five people could have been hit by lightning in the very chair I was sitting in and how would I know? I had no place to go right then and would have to cross open ground to get anywhere so I just sat with a few other people in the park. The streets were still filled with folks getting on with their day and none of us got hit by lightning. So we were all safe after the storm was said and done.

I’ve stood under my back porch during a thunder storm but I don’t think I’ve ever been outside quite like I was on Wednesday. I may have been under a bus shelter or two during some lightning incidents but that was never by choice. And only until a bus came along. No, this was the first time I was out, sorta by choice, while all around me it rained and thundered. It made me feel like I was living dangerously. I’m not much of a danger hound but you could probably tell that from this story. If a story it is. Oh wow, I’m blowin’ my mind up. Later.

Man, I’ve got to clean up and put things in order again. It’s never ending this entropy thing. There are always things to clean up or fix. The world is a messy place. Got to apply energy to the system.

One of my bookshelves looks like something happened to it and the shelves are slightly lower on one side. It didn’t used to be like this but some funny things have happened to that shelf. It’s a shelf I built myself a few years ago out of 1×8 pine. I don’t build the prettiest shelves in the world but they get the job done. The strange thing was that, just this winter, I noticed the left side of the bottom shelf had nothing holding it up. No screws or fasteners attached the horizontal shelf to its vertical side board. How did this happen? It’s not like the screws fell out. They were never there. Yet the shelf has been standing fine since I built it without the bottom shelf even sagging. Blew my mind.

I lost a few books on that shelf because of water damage when a pipe burst. Nothing important just a few volumes of Essential Fantastic Four. At least the cheap books got wet and not my hardcovers. Water can be evil. Now I have to take all the books of the shelf and see what’s making it lean. Got to apply energy to the system.

I’ve got paper and canvases lying around the studio cluttering things up. I have to find a place for them so I can get some work done. I’m not a neatnik but when clutter reaches a certain critical level I can’t get anything done until I make some elbow room.

I have some books that I have to find room for on the shelves. That’s always a challenge and the reason why I build shelves everywhere that I can. I also have a few new boxes of comics that I need to put somewhere. I’m going to get rid of them on Ebay someday but not soon enough. They need to find a place to be.

And the tile has been slowly breaking off of my floor. That’s been going on for ages and being a crazy artist I’ve been wanting to make a mosaic where the blank spots are. Of course that means having to learn to make a tile mosaic. I need some tile nippers and safety glasses. And some grout and tile cement and whatever else sticks tile to the floor. More energy into the system.

I have to try out my new brushes and ink too. I bought three new Windsor Newton Series 7 Number 3 brushes last week to replenish my stock but I haven’t had the chance to try one out. They should be just as good as all the other brushes of that type I’ve had over the years but it’s always exciting to have a new one. I also bought a brand of ink I’ve never used before: Blick Black Cat Waterproof India Ink. I hope it’s good stuff. My favorite ink has always been Higgins T 100 Drafting Film Ink but it’s harder to come by these days. I guess there’s not as much need for drafting film as there used to be.

I did finally resurface my drawing table after all these years. I found a cheaper cutting mat ($40 as opposed to $80) that is the bees knees with me. That dirty old Borco / Vyco Drawing Board Cover I had on it is finally gone. The new cutting mat cleans easier and doesn’t buckle in direct sunlight. Some afternoons my Borco covering would get wavy if it was a particularly hot day. It was annoying but I lived with it. Not anymore. I applied energy to the system.