Radiant Comics

I’m not a big cell phone person. I’m tethered to a computer most of the day and I have an iPad that use all the time so I mostly use those two things to communicate with people. I still have my first pay-as-you-go Nokia phone from 2008 and that was my only cell phone for many years. It wasn’t until 2014 that I got a smart phone and even then I didn’t set it up as a phone for years.

That 2014 phone was an Amazon Fire phone. For a brief year or two Amazon got into the phone business with their own Android based operating system. I bought my Fire phone in December of 2014 and I only bought it because it went on sale and I wanted to use it as a music player and camera. I was already a user of Amazon Prime and when I bought the phone for $250 it also added on a year of Prime which cost about $100. For me that was like getting a $150 camera and music player.

After Amazon left the phone business in 2015 I couldn’t find any new apps for my phone. That was okay though as I continues to take photos with it and use it as my primary portable music player. Though it still had no SIM card in it and wasn’t a phone. There were a couple of occasions when I tried to get one of those newer pay-as-you-go services that would sell me a SIM card and service but none of them were compatible.

It wasn’t until 2019 when I found a company called Ting that worked with my phone. It was a little annoying in that I had to pay for calls and texts but since I didn’t make many my bill was usually around $15 a month. It would get up to $25 a month on occasion. It was really an in case of emergency phone.

Cut to the beginning of September of 2021 and I get an e-mail from Ting that tells me my phone will no longer be able to get on the network. It won’t work come October of 2021. I had to get a new phone. Having just spent around $1800 on a new computer just the week before this news could have come at a better time.

The first thing I did was look at the phones Ting had for sale on their website. Since my computer and tablet are both made by Apple I wanted some sort of iPhone but I certainly didn’t have $1000 to drop on one. No thank you. But it turns out Apple has a budget phone. It’s the iPhoneSE. It’s not the latest and greatest but I don’t need that anyway. Instead of being $1000 it’s $400.

I was also a little tired of my monthly bill varying every month. Recently I have been getting a lot of spam texts. Someone else obviously used my phone number when she signed up for something so that she wouldn’t get the spam. The idea that I had to pay money for those was bothering me.

My father and sister both use TracPhone and said their iPhoneSEs were cheaper than $400 so I decided to check them out. Turns out they were selling the phone for $200 as long as you got a plan with them. I picked the $200 12 month plan of 12gigs of data a month plus unlimited calls and texts. Spam wouldn’t bother me then. That break down to $16.66 a month with no $25 month surprises. I don’t plan to use much data.

I ordered the phone and it got here in a couple of days. My main concern was transferring my old number to my new phone. I went to the activate tab on TracPhone’s website as they said and started the transfer process. I ran into a wall right away as I had to pick my carrier and they didn’t have Ting on their list. I had to call their number and get a human.

I got woman and she asked me if I set up my phone already. Since transferring the number was step one on the website I didn’t. I took a few minutes and set it up as I was on the land line with the women. Then she asked if I had the Ting account number and I was able to find that on an e-mail. Next she asked me for the pin number. I had no idea I even had a pin number for that phone. I looked in my book where I write down such things and I could find one.

That made woman number one have to pass me onto woman number two. When she got on the line she said that we were going to have to call Ting to verify that I was me. So she got woman number three, from Ting, on the phone. Eventually woman number three sent me an e-mail with a number that I could verify.

The woman form Ting also asked me why I was leaving. I said, “My phone will no longer work on your network and they have cheaper phones and plans.” She said, “Oh” in response. Clearly that was a fine reason. Woman number two told me that the switchover should happen by 5:33 and they’ll give me a confirmation call at 6:00. But I could try the phone before then because the switch could happen early. It didn’t.

When woman number four called at 6:00 my phone still couldn’t make or receive calls. After about ten minutes of her doing stuff on her end and me testing things out on mine everything worked. I could make and receive calls and texts and log onto the internet. Everything was good to go.

Overall the process was fairly painless. I had to spend an hour or so on the phone that I didn’t really want to but all four women were nice and helpful. I’ve got a new phone now and even though I don’t think it’ll make a huge impact on my life I don’t feel like I’m frozen in time anymore. Having a smart phone for over five years that I couldn’t add any new apps to is a weird experience in this day and age. A day and age that I’ve just joined.

I haven’t written about what TV shows I’m currently watching in a long time. I bet I’ve forgotten some but that’s life. We forget most everything over time. That’s why I like to write things down.

Go On – A 2012 Mathew Perry sitcom that lasted for one season and 22 episodes. This is the first time I’ve seen it since it first ran (it’s November 2021 as I write this). I liked it back then and I still like it. Perry is a sports talk radio host who recently lost his wife. He joins a bereavement group full of weirdos and they all slowly bond over goofy plots. I find it sharp and amusing.

You – Our almost serial killer star is back and this time he has a new baby with his murderous wife. They try not to get angry and kill anyone but life doesn’t always cooperate with them. I’ve watched the first three episodes of season three on Netflix and I’m enjoying it. It’s a dark comedy.

Alone Together – An Esther Povitsky and Benjy Aflalo sitcom from 2018 that had two seasons and 20 episodes. I really enjoy this weird and quirky sitcom about two millennials who are friends but not romantically involved with each other. They’re losers in life who are always looking for an angle to be winners. A couple of goofballs who indulge their flaws to make us laugh.

Young Sheldon – Back for a fourth season this “Big Bang Theory” spinoff is amusing. It’s a family comedy about boy genius Sheldon Cooper as he’s growing up. It’s not groundbreaking or edgy but it’s amusing and does a good job being funny and likable.

Are You There, Chelsea? – Another rewatch as it’s a sitcom from 2012 that has only 12 episodes. It stars Laura Prepon and is based on a book by Chelsea Handler about her life back when she was an ordinary person. Not the greatest show and a bit obvious at time but I still like it. It takes place in a bar as our lead character is a waitress but it’s really about her and her friends. They mostly work in the bar too.

FBI – I haven’t liked the spin-offs of this show (there are two other FBI shows at this writing) but I still like the original. It’s an FBI procedural in which the agents solve crimes and have adventures every week.

Dexter – Dexter is back and I’ve only seen two episodes so far but they were good.

Equalizer – A lot of people online complained that they didn’t buy into Queen Latifah being the Equalizer but I do. I like the show. It’s not the greatest TV ever but I enjoy seeing the Equalizer help the helpless. It’s okay with me.

Sinner – This is the fourth season of the series and each season is a new plot. I don’t even remember the name of Bill Pullman’s character but in this season he’s now a retired police detective. He’s helping out some local police on an island in Maine look into a death. I’d call it a procedural but it’s really about watching Pullman try to figure out a weird crime as he gets his mind drawn down into a dark and crazy place. We he get out of there? We’ll see.

The Simpsons – Season 31 and I’m still watching. I don’t plan on stopping until they stop making them.

Ghosts – A new sitcom staring Rose McIver from “I Zombie.” She has a near death experience and now can see the ghosts who live at her newly bought bed and breakfast. I like McIver and find the show entertaining.

A.P. Bio – The third season of Always Sunny alum Glen Howerton’s show about a teacher who has no interest in actually teaching a high school AP bio class. It’s a sitcom full of zany characters including the students, teachers, and administrators. If you like your sitcoms with a side car of weirdos than check this one out.

Big Sky – Back for a second season this show is about a pair of women who are detectives in Montana. I notice they are the absolute worse at rescuing people as they always show up a few minutes late and miss out. That’s probably because shows these days have plots that last all season long so if they rescue someone in episode one the season is over! Anyway I like the show.

Condor – I just started watching this show that has two ten episode seasons in the can. It’s based on the book “Six Days of the Condor” and the movie “Three Days of the Condor” and so far the first two episodes have been about the same as the first third of the movie. I like the movie so I’m enjoying the show so far. We’ll see where it goes.

Playing House – A show from 2014 that has three seasons and 26 episodes staring Lennon Parham and Jessica St. Clair in a buddy comedy sitcom. I also just watched their six episode series “Best Friends Forever from 2012. It’s kind of a continuation of that series in a different setting as they are both buddy comedies with the same two stars. I find it smart and funny.

The Rookie – Nathan Fillion’s show is in its fourth season and I still dig it. A police procedural for sure but it’s as much about the characters as the policing. I’ve been enjoying Fillion shows on TV for a long time.

Magnum PI – I think I enjoy the sunshine and scenery in this Hawaii based show as much as I enjoy the action. And this is an action show. It starts fast with some sort of crime and our two lead characters, Magnum and Higgins, are quickly on the go and then keep going for the whole show. There are always a couple of slowdown moments for character development and then it’s back to the action. I think this show has even grown on me,

Only Murders in the Building – Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez live in a fancy NYC apartment building and meet and bond over a murder in their building. Not only do they bond but they start a true crime podcast about the murder and try to solve it themselves. Charming is the word to describe it.

New Tricks – A British police procedural about a cold case squad. It’s from the early 2000s but I’ve never seen it before. Solid.

The Blacklist – Season Nine of the Blacklist and I’m still enjoying it. They changes a lot of stuff so far this season but most of it is still the same.

Abby’s – A show that ran in 2019 and had 20 episodes. There is something about this show, that takes place in a backyard bar, that I like. It’s not the funniest, smartest, or wittiest show but I find it likable. Maybe it’s as simple as that. I rewatched it because I enjoy hanging out in the backyard bar with these people.

Harrow – I watched seasons two and three of this show because I somehow missed that season two ever came out. It’s a procedural about a coroner in Australia who solves crimes. It falls into the “Quirky detective” genre that I like.

Seal Team – Back for season five but now they’ve moved it to a streaming service so the sailors can now curse on the show. Since the phrase “Curse like a sailor” has been around forever I think the show is more realistic now.

So there you have it. What have you been watching?

Slizard Happy

I’ve been working on some drawings in my “Art on Comics” series this week. It used to be called my “Monsters on Comics” series because I drew a lot of monster faces that way but this week I felt like drawing regular faces and not monster ones. Or at least faces as regular as I draw because in the end they tend to be pretty weird faces. I add markings and strange features to them to make them more interesting to me.

I originally started drawing on pieces of paper torn out of comic book many years ago. It was because, as a comic book fan, I have a ton of worthless comics sitting around doing nothing but waiting to be gotten rid of so I decided to do something with them. I tried many ways of drawing on them over the years and have found one way that works for me.

First of all there is the paper of the comic book. I like to draw on the old newsprint of 1970s comics better than the slick and glossy paper of today’s comic books. One day I was at my local comic book store when the owner was throwing out some battered and worthless comic books. He had recently bought a collection and these were the super crappy books that he couldn’t ever sell. But they were good for my purpose: tearing out the pages and drawing on them. So I took home a stack of about 25 comics that I could use for that purpose.

Those comic sat in an untouched pile for over a year because I didn’t do any drawings on comics. That was probably because I had only mostly done monsters on them up until that time and if I didn’t feel like drawing monsters I didn’t bother drawing on comics. That was until this week. In the past I had drawn a couple of regular faces on comics but not many. As I didn’t want to draw monsters it struck me to revisit my other faces as drawing on comics. That got me pumped up.

When I did my first drawings on torn comic book pages I used white conté crayon and charcoal. The white conté crayon worked fine but the charcoal didn’t. Old newsprint is delicate and I had to press too hard with the charcoal to get it black enough. I ended up switching over to a black marker and that worked well. These days I use a black Copic brush marker. It’s number 110 and is called “Special Black.” I think it’s supposed to be more of a matte black than other markers. It woks well on the paper and with the white conté crayon.

Slip Slam

The white conté crayon I used had been sitting around my studio since the 1990s. It was old. After I used it up I tried to replace it. I bought the same brand and softness but when I went to draw it wasn’t nearly as soft as I needed it to be. It was too hard and I had to really press with it to get the white going. Not good. After that failure I went on a search to find something to replace my old white conté crayon. I tried other brands, white charcoal, and anything else I could find. In the end it was a white pastel that finally did what I wanted it to. That’s what I’ve used ever since.

When making a “Monsters on Comics” drawing I used to sketch out the monster face either on a small piece of paper first or with the black marker right on the torn out paper. I tried drawing with the black marker right on the paper but I didn’t like it this time. There wasn’t enough contrast between the black of the marker and the printed comic book page. I switched over to drawing the initial sketch with the white pastel and liked it better.

Here was my method to draw these faces on comics. First of all I worked on four of them at once. I found it a little more interesting that way. Sometimes I like switching between things because it keeps me more interested and focused. It can also be satisfying to finish a few things at once. Finishing one drawing can be less impressive (even to myself) than finishing four drawings that I can look at and compare and contrast.

I grab my box of white pastels and grab a stick. I then sketch out a face. Sometimes the look of a face pops into my head and that’s what I draw but that doesn’t always happen. My second method it to look around at photos or some such and see if I can find a face that interests me. Sometimes it’s just a head shape, haircuts, or a single facial feature. I uses one of those to get started. The third method is to put pastel to paper and draw. I put down marks and react to them.

John Blizzard

This morning I decided to draw all four with their steps synchronized. Often I skip from drawing to drawing leaving them at different stages but not today. So I first made four head sketches in white and then moved onto step two. That’s when I take a black brush marker and draw over the white sketch in black. It’s not the final black line yet. Just the first. I did this four times on the four drawings.

Step three is to fill in the face with white. It doesn’t have to be perfect but anywhere that’s not black will get some white pastel. I did this for all four drawings and then picked up an old dried out black brush marker. I used the dried out marker as a blender with which I blend the edges of the black ink with the white pastel.

After step three is when all the work happens. After blending there is always an imbalance between the white and the black. So I go back in with the black marker, blend again, add some more white pastel, blend again, and keep doing this many times until I get the drawing I’m looking for. All the other steps are in preparation for this step. This is when I often switch between drawings. It helps me to see what’s going on as I get a fresh look at one after working on the others for half an hour.

It took me from 8AM until Noon today to finish four drawings so that means they take about an hour a piece. That’s not bad. Sometimes I find it fun to have a technique that’s fairly quick and I can get a bunch of images made. When working on the stuff that takes a lot longer it’s key to have an image that I like and want to work on. The quicker drawings give me a lot to choose from. I like that.

The last step with these drawings is to hit them with some spray varnish. Pastel is a powder and will make a mess of things as time goes by. The spray varnish keep the pastel in place. A side effect of the varnish that I like it that it makes the white pastel slightly less opaque. The print of the comic book shows through a little more than when it was unsprayed. I think that makes it look a little better. I’m always good with making things look better.

My Patreon Link

This was written before I launched my Patreon last week.

I’m going to be starting a Patreon. That’s a website where normal people, for a small monthly fee, can become patrons of their favorite artists. That’s the plan for the end of the summer. It was about five years ago that I first checked out Patreon and thought about using it but I didn’t. The main flaw is that I don’t have many fans. I also wasn’t sure what I had to offer hypothetical fans of mine on Patreon.

Since then I have see lots of people have Patreons. It seems everybody and his mother on YouTube have one set up. People who, I think, have a lot less to offer than me. Yet they do it. So why shouldn’t I give it a try? A feeling of futility is why but I’m going to have to overcome that. A friend told me that the average Patreon gets $150 a month. That’s not much but it’s beats zero dollars a month if I’m making art anyway.

The second thing to stop me from making a Patreon was figuring out what I was going to do. What could I post there to get people to visit and sign up? I already have a free webcomic and blog that’s been running for 11 and 16 years respectively and hardly anyone checks those out. Why would anyone sign up to give me five bucks a month?

That’s when I came up with the idea for a monthly digital art magazine of my work. That is where I will start. Maybe I can offer other things in the future but I’ll start with a PDF magazine. That I know I can do. One of my main sources of income over my career has been doing the prepress on comic books and other publications. I can design and set up a magazine in my sleep. Or at least so I thought.

The thing that I forgot is that it’s harder to design a publication around your own art. Or at least it is to me. I imagine it is for other people too. Part of making art is thinking about what you’re making as you’re making it. As I’m making a painting, drawing, comic strip, or whatever, I always thinking about how I see it and what it means. Is it better if I put the hand here or here? Lots of little choices and decisions go into a piece of art that all add up to the finished piece.

All my finished pieces have a point. Often the point is to be interesting, beautiful, meaningful, and to hopefully make the viewer (and me) feel something. Pieces might have individual points but that’s the general thrust of them. When I finish a piece it’s done. I’ve said what I have to say with it and move on to the next thing I have to say. The problem I ran into was “What do I have to say by showing a piece in a digital magazine?”

Presentation is everything. I just painted a 24×36 inch acrylic on canvas painting and the best way to present it is to stand in front of the original painting. That’s how I made it and mean it to be seen. So how do I present that painting, alone with other of my works, in a digital magazine? I’m going to have to take a digital photo of it since it’s too big for me to scan in but how am I going to present that photo and get it in any way close to the experience of looking at it in person?

This is why I said it was easier to do design using other people’s work rather than my own. When designing around someone else’s stuff I have no idea what their thought process was when creating the art. I can just go by what it makes me think and feel and make something out of that.

I opened up an Adobe program called InDesign which is used to make all sorts of books and publications and started to come up with some designs. I worked on and off for a couple of days and came up with nothing that I liked. I was mixing scans of my art with color and type and came up with mediocrity. That’s a problem.

My first breakthrough was to crack the writing. I knew that I would have to have some words to go with the pictures but I had no idea what words. I ended up by defining my terms. I work in a wide variety of categories with a wide variety of materials. Just for an example I’ve got working drawings, thumbnail drawings, ink drawings, finished drawings, and spontaneous drawings. That’s five different types of drawings and probably not a lot of people know what all those types actually are. So I’d tell them.

I developed a design for a vocabulary page. I already wanted to present my art in related groups. Gouache paintings with gouache paintings, digital prints with digital prints, and so on. So before each section in the magazine I’ll put a vocabulary page with a key word and explanation. That’ll tie the whole thing together.

The second breakthrough I had in the design phase was to use textures. At first I was designing with blocks of color. The problem was that a lot of my work has block of color in it or at least is very geometric. So blocks of color in the design can really change the nature of the art. I was not liking anything that I was making with my initial ideas. So I turned to my textures.

I’ve collected textures photographically for years. As I’ve been out taking street photos I’ve also taken photos of textures in general. I have a big collection of them. I’ve also scanned in paper and canvas to collect their textures. I only have about 20 of them but they’re what I decided to use. I even made three new color textures by painting light washes of color ink on three sheets of 8.5×11 inch sample watercolor paper that I bought recently.

I put these various textures behind my art in my designs and it worked well for me. I like the mixing of the scans and photos of my art with the scans of actual paper textures of all sorts. I think it grounds the design.

I’m still a long way from finished with the first magazine but at least now I think I am going to finish. Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way in the beginning when I can’t find my way. I’ll keep you posted on the digital magazine and I’ll keep you posted on my Patreon.

My New Patreon Link

So what’s new this week? I finally started a Patreon. I actually set up a Patreon way back in 2014 (it’s October 2021 as I write this) but I never made it go live. Why did I never make it go live you ask? The easy answers is that I didn’t know what to do with it. I’ve been a person who has been very creative all my life and I have made a ton of art but I don’t have many fans. It’s tough to make any kind of mark in the world and, so far, I haven’t. Why start a Patreon if there is no one to support it? That’s the question I could never answer.

Of course the other big question was what to offer anyone on Patreon. I already have this blog and webcomic for free so what could my Patreon be about? What could I offer to patrons besides a peek behind the curtain of making art? This time around I decided to make a digital magazine of my art. It seems a good way to organize things. For six bucks a month you can get a digital magazine full of my art arranged in a way that makes things attractive and easy to digest. I have over 30 years of work to present so I’m not going to run out of material anytime soon.

I managed to get three 64 page issues of the magazine done before my launch. It’s called “Art From the Edge of the Dreamworld.” I wanted to get just one of them done and then launch but I put the launch off all summer and worked on some more issues. I wish I had a good reason to put the launch off but it was really just a fear of pointlessness. At least that’s what I’ve come to call my ambivalence about launching any big new artistic endeavor these days.

A lot of people suffer from a fear of failure and that stops them from doing stuff. I can understand that. Failure is painful. Failure is tough. You put your all into something and in the end it fails. You set out to climb a mountain but instead never get past base camp. That’s a legitimate fear. I think fear of pointlessness is a little bit different though.

I’m a doer. I can get things done. That I know. A fear of failure doesn’t stop me from doing things. I can accept failure in a larger sense as long as I get some satisfaction out of a creative endeavor. Yet fear of pointlessness can be a roadblock for me. It might not even be a fear but a reasonable calculation. I didn’t start this Patreon back in 2014 because I didn’t see the point of it. With no fans and no idea how to get them why have a platform that is only for my nonexistent fans? It seemed pointless. That’s what a fear of pointlessness is. Looking ahead and seeing no path to success. I think that’s different than a fear of failure.

So what has changed in my perception of Patreon and its pointlessness? Time and other people. I’ve been making videos on YouTube since about 2014. I make one or two videos a week. Not a ton of people watch them but about 100 do. It doesn’t make me money but I like doing it. It’s easy and I get to interact with people. My videos art mostly about comic books but they are sometimes about my art. I have a few fans there so that’s encouraging.

My New Patreon Link

It was really watching other people’s videos that got me wanting to start my Patreon. Y’see, lots of people have Patreons these days. And a lot of those people have nothing to offer. Their videos are crap, they don’t have many fans, but they still have people supporting them on Patreon. Not many but some. So why was I letting things get in my way?

I think some of it was fear of pointlessness but some of it was also ego. Most creative things I do are not judged by how much money they make. A Patreon is. I’ve been writing this blog for 16 years and no one cares that it makes me no money but a Patreon is designed to make money for artists. That’s its whole point. So if I fail at that, as I probably will, isn’t that a public blow to my artistic ego? Here is this platform designed to do exactly what an artist needs it to do and if I can’t be successful at it what’s the point of anything I do?

But these little rinky-dink YouTubers don’t give a crap about any of that and just set up a Patreon so why don’t I? They inspired me to do it.

Now that I have my Patreon up and running I’m going to have to figure out how to promote both it and myself. That’s something I’ve never spent a lot of time doing. Doing artwork and being creative is hard. It takes up a lot of time. So doing that plus earning a living doesn’t leave a lot of time for self-promotion. That’s a whole other job and a whole other skill set. One I need to learn.

The only way for me to learn this new skill set is to cut back on making art. That’s why I’ve never bothered with it before. But since I launched a Patreon now is the time. I’ve been sitting around for a few days contemplating how to promote but I think it’s going to take a lot longer than that because I don’t have much so far. I just have other social media platforms that not many people pay attention to me on. No one said it would be easy.

I did finish my fifth canvas for the year and so have worked on a good many big projects in 2021. I think it’s time to work on some small ones to keep creative as I figure out how to promote. Over the last few days I’ve made some art card drawings on Magic the Gathering cards and made some Paste-Up Mash-Ups with some of those MTG cards and old comic books. Those are little somethings I can get done. And I still like getting things done.

My New Patreon Link