Radiant Comics

Back in September I get a new computer. I replaced my old 2008 Mac Pro Tower with a new M1 MacMini. Of course this meant I had to change a lot of stuff around which I wrote about here: (Mac Mini Time) and here: (Getting the Mac Mini Going) .

This week I write about the final thing I got going and why. The why is easy. It’s because my 12×12 inch Wacom tablet was way too old to work with my new Mac Mini. I bought that tablet sometime in the early 2000s and it was just barely compatible with the last operating system I could run on my old tower. I had to jump through some hoops to get it to work with the 2008 tower. There was no way it was going to run on the 2021 M1 MacMini.

I priced out a new Wacom Tablet and ever the screen-less variety, that I used, was pricey. I think it was about $600 to replace my tablet with something similar from Wacom. I didn’t have that kind of money so I decided to try another brand. I settled on a 10×6 inch Huion Inspiroy Q62OM that cost about $75. I figured there was no way it was going to be as good as my Wacom but since I had $75 and not $600 I thought I’d give it a try.

I’ve been working on the Huion for the last five months and here is my report. The thing is twitchy as hell. It’s not hard to set up and when it works it works well but it doesn’t always work. It turns itself off. A Wacom is always on. You pick up the pen and go to work. The Huion comes with an app to set up the tablet but the app also has to be open for the table to run. At least sometimes it does.

I can turn on the computer and everything is fine but then I go back to it later in the day and the tablet doesn’t work. That’s when I have to open the app and the tablet runs again. An hour later the tablet might stop and I look and see the app is no longer open so I have to launch it. I have no idea why this is all happening.

The Huion is also bad at the edges of the screen. If I move the curser down to the bottom of my screen, where my Dock is, the cursor gets stuck. It ceases to move. I have to grab my mouse to click on anything in the dock. The Huion is not terrible but it makes me think about it too much.

I have one other Wacom tablet. That’s the Wacom Cintiq 12X that I bought for a whole lot of money back in 2008 and never used as much as I though I would. It’s the smallest tablet, that is also a screen, that Wacom ever made. And it’s really too small. It’s been hooked up to my backup computer (yet another 2008 MacPro Tower) for years now since I preferred to use the bigger 12×12 inch Wacom tablet every day even if it didn’t have a screen.

After five months of using the 10×6 inch Huion I decided to see if the 2008 Wacom Cintiq would run on my new M1 Mac Mini. I knew I would have to find the correct connectors since the Cintiq was old. I did some research on the internet, looked through the dozen or so monitor adaptors I already had, and decided that I need a VGA to USB3/Thunderbold adaptor. I ordered one.

Once I got the adaptor I thought I made a mistake. I couldn’t hook up the adaptor to the Cintiq. It turned out that the Cintiq was hooked up to my backup Tower via a DVI to DVI cable. I needed the DVI to VGA cable that the Cintiq also came with. I suppose I could have bought a DVI to USB3 cable but somehow I didn’t. Luckily I keep all my old cables so I had the right one. Cintiq to DVI to VGA to USB3.

Then I had to rearrange my whole computer cable setup to hook up the Cintiq. I have a ten port USB hub, a six port USB hub, and two dual slot hard drive docks on the table behind my monitor and keyboard. I had to fit all the Cintiq wires in there too. The Cintiq has a small 6x4x2 inch box that comes with it. The power cable, USB Cable, DVI Cable, and the cable that goes to the actual Cintiq all plug into it. That’s four more cables for one thing.

I found a two foot piece of 1×6 pine that I put two wood blocks under to make a shelf. The Cintiq box went under the shelf and all the other stuff, that was already there, went on top. It took some doing but, all things considered, it came out fine. Everything was arranged neatly.

I was happy to find out that the Wacom drivers still worked with my new Mac Mini and my old Cintiq. The screen on the Cintiq is still way too small to be effective but using it just like my old one that had no screen works okay. Even after using it for just an hour it’s a lot more pleasurable to use than the Huion. It’s more responsive to the touch of the pen and I can us it all the way to the edge of the screen. My dock is now within reach of my tablet.

One more thing I tried was to hook up the Huion to my laptop. I teach classes remotely on my laptop. When we first all went remote I got a $60 4×5 inch Wacom tablet. It ended up not being very good. I abandoned it after a couple of months and have been working exclusively with the touch pad ever since. That’s a little clumsy.

Though I only tested it for a few minutes the Huion worked well with the laptop. Everything went smoothly and I could go all the way to the edge and reach the dock. I think that will make it easier to teach this semester. That leaves me with a lot of things to hook up to my laptop before class. A microphone, a speaker, a second monitor, and Ethernet cable, and now a Huion tablet. I better start five minutes earlier.

I think I’m going to pull an old painting out of storage, take a look at it, and write about it. I don’t think I’ve done that in a long time. I’ll grab one of my 8×10 inch acrylic on canvas paintings.

The painting I pulled out is called “Sleeves of Grass.” It’s got the date on it of July 10, 2009. As it’s December 12, 2021 as I write this that makes it over 12 year old. A pretty good chunk of time has gone by since I painted this.

It’s a painting of a person who appears to be in some sort of clothing or armor that’s made of art. It’s certainly not made of anything practical. It’s a profile view with the head and shoulders in frame. It’s also an androgynous figure. There are no clues to if the figure is male or female. A lot of my art is like that. This could be an alien for all I know.

I think there is a balance to the color in this one. I’m trying to determine is there is a dominant color in the painting but I don’t think there is. The red border might be but the blue inside rectangle balances the red out very well. I think balance might be the theme of my color in this one.

The yellow of the face is the brightest color in the piece. That makes it the whitest white. That’s important in the color theory I’ve been using since college. I use color and create depth by organizing around the values of the colors. The brightest color always moves forward in the viewer’s eye. It stands out. So when someone looks at this painting the yellow face stands out the most. Everything else revolves around that.

The light blue rectangle in the middle background was an interesting choice. It’s the second brightest color in the painting and it’s right next to the brightest color. That really draws the eye to the face and everything else swirls around it.

There are a lot of stretched and bent triangles in this painting. I think that adds to the swirling felling of it. The bottom of the painting has purple and blue bent triangles that makes up a bunch of cloth in what may be a cloak or cape. There is a lot of alien-ness to this painting. It’s tough to make out the clothes. What kind of headdress it that? Are those spikes on his forehead? Is this a martial outfit or some kind of fancy dress? I have the questions but not the answers.

I often make art where I don’t have all the answers. I like that. I enjoy looking at a piece and wondering. I like to go to place on the edge of the dreamworld and bring back images that I can’t quite explain but like asking questions about. I like finding meaning in them.

There are a lot of neutral browns in this painting. Neutrals are an important part of organizing the color in a painting. It terms or brightness they’re usually in the middle so they are never the brightest white or the darkest black of a painting. They sit there in the middle of the spacial structure. The brights pop over them and the darks sit behind them. The neutrals do their job here separating the colors.

The bent red triangles near the middle of the painting really stand out well over top of the neutrals. They kind of unite with the red outside border to almost creates a dominant color but not quite. The influence of the light blue knocks them down a bit. I notice there is a darker red on the sides of the border. The dark red even starts higher up on the left side. I bet I did that to knock down the amount of bright red. If the dark red was bright then it may have thrown the color balance off. I bet that’s why I put it there.

The color that does the least heavy lifting is the blue down the bottom. Blue and purples actually. They work together in harmony and since they’re analogous colors they don’t fight with each other at all. They sit down there and provide a strong foundation for the image. They’re the ground that the tree is planted in.

The three circles of blue in the upper right corner are interesting. They don’t bring much attention to themselves by virtue of being near a bigger area of brighter blue but they stand out on pondering. They become part of the story. What are they? Why are they there? Are they a line of sight? A super power? Once again, questions.

The finishing touches were those decorative brush strokes on the right and left sides. Some blue/green rectangles with marks of yellow in them. They’re there for the color balance and to give the eye something to look at. I always do them last and they are not part of the color sketch. I like to leave room for spontaneity when I’m painting and they are it.

The thing green brush strokes are a little more important. I’m sure I did those at the end too and they bring the painting together for me. In terms of both design and color they are there to make the painting come alive. They’re gestures that suggest direction, lines that suggest detail, and with enough of them they influence the color too. For little thin lines added at the end they do a remarkable lot of the heavy lifting.

I like this one. I don’t think it’s one of the most striking images I’ve ever made but it holds up to viewing. As I look at it I get more and more intrigued by it. There is a complex organization to it that becomes more noticeable the more I look at it.

The last thing I’ll observe is the pink brush strokes on top of the red triangles. They work for me. I’m not sure why but I’m attracted to them. My eye keeps looking at them. I’m good with that.

I just finished marker coloring “Dreams of Things” #126. It’s a comic book cover to a comic book that doesn’t exist. This series of drawing started out many years ago as a way to create some simple dream like images but hey have morphed into more complex images. They used to take a fairly short time to complete but not anymore. Instead of about six to eight hours to make one it now takes twelve to fourteen hours. That’s a big increase.

I mention the time they take because even though they take a while I can break them down into three four hour stages: pencilling, inking, and coloring. That has allowed me to get some of them done over the last month when I haven’t been able to get much else done.

It’s November 29, 2021 as I write this and I often find it hard to get my own art done as the year is winding down. Between Christmas, Thanksgiving, and various paying jobs a lot of my time is taken up with things than making art. It’s tough to be self motivated so I have to find ways to keep going.

I finished a lot of big stuff this year. I got five 24×36 inch acrylic on canvas paintings done plus I finished another one bigger than that. The big one had even been sitting around my studio for 20 years. I also got a lot of big ink drawings done. I’m not exactly sure how many but it’s a least a dozen. I also started my Patreon and finished three 68 page magazines filled with my art. I can say I accomplished a lot this year. But still it brings me down a little when I slow down.

So I’m going to take a moment and contemplate “Dreams of Things” cover number 126 to bask in something I managed to finish. I pencilled it fairly recently. Sometimes I have ideas and do drawings for these covers but then they sit around for a while. Not with this one. I ran out of “Sitting around” drawings so I took a few days and did some new ones.

That’s another thing that plays with my felling of “getting something done.” It takes time to draw one of theses covers. It takes about four hours. After I finish the drawing I scan it in, put the logos on digitally, and then print it out to be inked. It’s still far from done at that stage so I never feel like I accomplished anything at that point.

I made this one using my side of the brush technique. That means I wasn’t going for a smooth and pretty line but a rough and ragged line. Not as ragged as my busted brush technique but it gives the line more texture than usual. All the lines on the two characters are rough edged but the background lines are smooth. That helps give it a sense of depth. Years ago, one of my teachers said to forget everything else; it’s overlap that really creates depth. I’ve got a lot of that going on here too. I’ve taken that lesson to heart.

When I pulled my markers out this morning the first part of this I colored was the background. That’s another thing I learned in art school. When making a painting always paint the background first. It’s actually hard to do since the background is usually the most boring part and we all would rather paint the interesting parts but it’s also really helpful.

I knew I wanted the background to be dark and neutral so I colored the sky at the tipity-top first. The part under the logo. It’s two different dark blues and they are barely visible. Then I colored the mountains below them in another dark blue. That was the easiest part of the whole cover. After that I made the second, and bigger, sky a dark and light purple. The brown and wood grain pyramids came after that. Then the greenish water. I flew through all of those because the color choices were easy and the areas small.

I colored the person on the right next. I knew his clothes should be orange so I pulled some orange and yellow markers out and went to town. It was just a matter of arranging the color. That part went down easy too but I had no idea what color his (or her) face should be.

I decided on red for the left hand character but his clothing was more complicated. He takes up half the drawing and is more flat than round. Plus he has a split face and two more faces in his shirt. I think I used five reds.

Actually the first thing I did was color the lower left face brown. For some reason I knew I wanted it that color. The half blue face was decided on next and that lead me to the half green one. The purple face was the last one chosen. Almost the last one. I had to go back and choose a color for the person on the right. I ended up going with grey. I couldn’t see any color working there so I went with a neutral. I usually don’t make faces grey but here it works.

Let me say something about the texture in the red shirt. Those are large flat areas of color and can become a visual hole in the picture if the artist isn’t careful. In marker I tend to use some indications of texture to give areas like that more visual interest. Otherwise the viewer can fall into that visual hole, be bored by it, and skip out on the whole drawing.

I’ve done 126 of these covers so far. I generally like them otherwise I wouldn’t still make them but some I like more than others. This one is middle of the pack. I don’t know why. It’s okay. I generally like the drawing, color, and imagery but it doesn’t move me like others do. I’m okay with that though. Sometimes I don’t like something I do but someone else does. I have to leave room for that in my judgement. I try not to get too high or low with any individual piece. At least I got something done.