Radiant Comics

I’ve been in a bit of an art malaise lately. It’s January 8th as I write this and I think it’s something that hits me every January. With the beginning of a new year I take a look at what I’ve gotten done and what I want to get done. That’s a tough thing to do. Maybe just the first part is. Figuring out what I want to get done in the coming year is not an easy task.

It was last January that I decided to work on my own illustrated edition of “The Great Gatsby.” I gave myself a year to do it but I’m not done just yet. I’ve made plenty of illustrations and designed most of the book but I still haven’t figured out what I want to draw for the cover. I also still want to do two more illustrations but I’m not yet sure what they are going to be. But I’m not sweating it. There is no real deadline for me to finish plus I know that I eventually will. But still it gives me pause that a whole year has passed as I worked on this.

I think it’s the knowing that I’ll finish a long term project that can cause some of the art malaise. Often when I have a project to work on that I’m the most happy and focused. I’ve picked out something worth doing and I’m doing it. When the project I finished there is a brief moment of satisfaction but no other reward. It’s not like anyone is paying me money for my art or is even bothering to look at it in general. I keep going because I like to keep going.

So here we are in January and I’m asking myself, “What’s next?” and I have no answer for myself just yet. I’m going to have to be patient and wait.

Not having any idea of what to do doesn’t stop me from doing stuff though. I’ve been getting one “Drifting and Dreaming” cover done a week for the last few months and I’ve kept that up. It’s not always easy to do but I may as well. For the last two weeks I’ve been drawing some new ones since I was almost out of finished drawings to ink and color but now I’ve got a few sitting around.

Having my usual projects sitting around waiting to be worked on is one of my keys to getting things done. The “Dreams of Things” covers are especially good for that as they and be in various stages of completions and I can work on any of the stages that I feel like.

I also started drawing in this year’s Inkbook. It is number 24. That means that this in my 24th year of filling up these Inkbooks with small ink drawings that I get a lot of my visual ideas from. I even changed things up a little bit this year. For the last five years or so I’ve been drawing in the Inkbook by making nine similar sized boxes on a page. I decided I was bored with that and started making boxes of various shapes and sizes at about ten or twelve a page. I felt I had gotten too rigid with my Inkbook drawing and so I want to loosen the format up a little. So far it’s been fun.

Another thing I started working on is my “Drifting and Dreaming” comic strip. I started making the cartoon art cards that make up the strip. Each one is a face looking out at us and a word balloon above the characters head saying something weird and witty. First I write then, then letter them, pencil the character, ink the character, and finally color in the card with markers. It’s easy to do one of them but I need a hundred and four of them a year for my strip.

I’ve already gotten forty of them done for next year (2024) but that still leaves a lot to go. I often split up the work on these over many days so I forget how long they really take. This past Sunday I got ten of them done (I usually do them in batches of ten) but it took me all day. I started at eight in the morning and finished around four in the afternoon. So I have seven days more work on theses cards for the year.

Today I started working on a Big Ink Drawing. Those are the 22×30 inch drawings that I like to make. I’ve done over fifty of them in the past but in 2022 I think I only got about four of them done. I was busy with my Gatsby stuff.

I like to make these Big Ink Drawings. I find them fun. Each one takes about three days to draw so it isn’t a ton of time but it’s not like I can knock one out in an afternoon. I’ve been thinking about starting one for a few months now but something else always takes precedence. It was always easier to start something that wasn’t a three day project even if that project eventually took longer.

Every other morning I thought about starting a Big Ink Drawing I couldn’t figure out what drawing I wanted to make. This morning I said to myself that I was just going to pick a drawing and start. I have nearly two hundred of my 6×9 inch “Three Marker Technique” drawings sitting around that I could pick from and blow up to Big Ink size.

I spent half an hour first thing in the morning looking through the drawings. I eventually picked one and started. I found the scan of it, printed out the drawing at 22×30 inches (on eight pieces of 8.5×11 inch paper taped together after printing), transferred it to the big paper with graphite paper, and started drawing it with ink. It was slow going and took all day but I got it started.

It’s good to get things started. I may not have many things figured out about the future but getting things going in the now can help keep away that artistic malaise. Keep drawing.

It’s January the first of 2023 as I write this. December was here and is now gone but as I look back on the month I notice that I bought a lot of odds and ends in terms of art related stuff. I think I ended up buying many things that I put off all year because they are mundane art related stuff. Paints, paper, markers, pencils, and canvases are much more thrilling to buy.

Canon Powershot 740s – This one is the most thrilling on the list but also a little anti-climatic. It doesn’t bring anything new to my photo taking but it is more convenient. I recently wrote about contemplating buying this camera (a-new-camera-almost-story) but I finally pulled the trigger on the purchase. It’s nice but I won’t get to really try it out until the new semester starts in a couple of weeks and I’m commuting to NYC again. But it will be nice to not to have to carry my bigger camera to take street photos.

Camera Case – I blew $20 on a camera case and I’m not sure why. I don’t think I’ll carry the case with the camera but I’ll put it in the case when the camera is home. It’s a cool case so what the heck. But it really wasn’t a necessity.

Camera Battery – It’s always good to have an extra battery to carry with the camera. At first I thought this camera used the same batteries as my older one but they’re ever so slightly different. Of course they are. The official Canon battery is $50 so I went with a $20 knock-off. In the past I’ve noticed that the knock-offs don’t last as long but I’m still not dropping $50 on a battery.

Camera SD Card – This is another iffy purchase as I could have used a card from one of my other cameras but I wanted this one to have its own. It was only $10 for a 64 GB card so it wasn’t that bad.

Mailing Boxes 7×10 inches – I’ve been looking to organize things around the studio and I have a bunch of small drawings stacked up that could be put into boxes to neaten up the place. I looked into buying archival art boxes, which I’ve bought before, but they are at least $20 a box. I ended up getting basic mailing boxes for much cheaper and buying archival sleeves for the art.

BCW 6×9 Inch Photo Sleeves – As a friend at my comic shop said recently, “What does it matter if your comic book boxes are non-archival as long as the bags you put the comics in are archival.” That made sense to me so after I bought the boxes I bought some archival sleeves. The art goes in the sleeves and the sleeves go in the boxes.

The problem I ran into with the sleeve was that they didn’t actually fit 6×9 inch paper. They fit 5 and 15/16 inch paper. I had to trim a sixteenth of an inch off the side of 250 drawings. I’ve got a good paper cutter so that made the job easier but it still took time. It’s a good thing all the drawings have a border around them. Plus I only bought 200 sleeves for those 250 drawings and so I need more sleeves.

110 Film Holder for Scanner – I bought a new film scanner earlier in the year and it came with holders for 35mm slides and film but it couldn’t scan 110 size film. I don’t have a lot of 110 film to scan but I do have some. I may as well spend $30 on a holder now rather than try and track one down in the future. This sort of equipment disappears from the marketplace after a while.

5.5×8 inches Sketchbook – I buy one of these every year to be my Ink Book for my Ink Book drawings. I’m up to Year 23 of filling up one of these with drawings every year.

Inkjet Photo Paper 11×17 Inches Glossy and Matte – This is a “Stocking Up” purchase. I noticed that I didn’t have much paper this size so I bought some more. The matte paper came damaged (the side is dented) but it’s thin matte paper so I’m only going to use it for proofing stuff and it was only $16. It’s annoying that it arrived damaged but it’s more trouble that it’s worth to return it. I think the glossy paper is okay but I thought the matte paper was okay until I went to use it.

Three Ring Plastic Storage Binder – This is another “Organizing” purchase. It’s an archival box with binder rings inside it to hold my art cards in nine card pages. My old binder was out of room so I figured I’d try one of these box binders. It’s nice.

Marker Holder – Yet another organizing purchase. This year I bought some knock-off Sharpie markers that Amazon brands and sells. They’re okay markers but I never had a good spot to store them. They sat around in an inconvenient pile. I bought a marker holder that’s a piece of foam with holes cut in it. It works just fine. At $13 the holder may have been more expensive than the markers. But marker holders aren’t cheap. They’re not really that expensive either so maybe it’s just that Sharpie knock-offs are really cheap.

4TB Hard Drive – This is a purchase to clean up and store some digital files. I would always rather buy more hard drives than to delete anything. So I have a lot of hard drives.

Frontline Combat #3 – Don’t get all excited. I didn’t buy the original of this from the 1950s. Instead I bought a reprint of it from the 1990s. It was only $10. This has always been one of my favorite comic book covers and I decided that I wanted a copy of it on a comic book. I have it in a hardcover book but I love comic books and their covers as objects so I wanted this.

Birthright #1-4 – Another few comics that have been on my want list for years. I have the collected edition of them but since I have the rest of the series in single issues I wanted these too. I looked for them on a whim and found them on eBay. All four of them together were $20 shipped. A good deal so I went for it.

Those last two don’t really count as art purchases but I figured I’d throw them in there anyway. I bought that “Frontline Combat” just for its cover art so it’s close. Close enough for blogging!

I watched the movie “Clerks III” last night. The original “Clerks” came out back in 1994 when I was 27 years old. I didn’t see it in the theaters but watched in on video with some friends when it was released that way. I enjoyed it and so did my friends.

“Clerks” is a slice of life movie that is about the everyday life of two guys, Dante and Randall, in their early twenties who work all day at neighboring Quick Stop and video stores. Hight School is just a few years behind them and still looms large in their lives but the future is also coming at them quickly and they are not as prepared for it as they would like to be. At least Dante isn’t. Randal is more of a “Live for the moment” character.

“Clerks” was one of the first, if not the first, movie which was made by and aimed at fans of what we now call geek culture. It made jokes about Star Wars and comic books. It’s hard to believe now in our Marvel movies world but there was a time when such things never got mentioned or referenced in mainstream movies and TV.

When “Clerks” came out it was a breath of fresh air. It was a low budget film made by first time film makers without much experience and a lot of amateurs too but it also captured some film making magic. It was fun and I had fun watching it. A few years ago I rewatched it and still liked it. It really does have something special that it’s hard to put into words.

There was a “Clerks II” back in 2006 and it was a solid movie. It was a slice of life movie about our two main character and how they were now in their mid thirties and floundering. They try to find their way in life and comedy ensues.

“Clerks III” is a movie made twenty eight years later than the first one by a bunch of people who have been working in film for three decades so of course it’s going to be completely different. And it is. But it’s also a film I liked.

This time around in a slice of Dante and Randal’s lives they are about fifty and Randal has a health scare that prompts him to reevaluate his life. As the “Live for the moment” character he never had a lot of ambition or a plan for his life. So he decides to make a movie. A movie about his life. This is where “Clerks III” starts to parallel “Clerks.”

“Clerks II” introduced the character Elias as a younger version of our two main characters and he is back being their sidekick again in this movie. So are Jay and Silent Bob who have also starred in their own movies.

They also bring back just about every small character from the original “Clerks” to make cameos. As they are shown making the movie the actors who played the characters back in 1994 are now shown making that very same movie in 2022. They even had a memorial photo of Lisa Spoonaeur in a beginning scene. She was in the original movie playing Dante’s ex-girlfriend but the actress died back in 2017.

“Clerks III” is a movie that knows it’s a sequel. It’s a movie that knows it’s a sequel to a 28 year old cult classic and wears that on its sleeve. We as an audience can’t help but look back to the original “Clerks” as we watch this one and the characters are also looking back. But they are looking back on their lives.

As we age there is often more looking back on our lives. It’s the same with these fictional characters. When they were in their early 20s life was in front of them. Though their past high school lives informed them in the first movie it was the future that consumed them. Now as the characters are around fifty their past is bigger and their future is smaller. That’s how it is with us in real life too. We tend to reflect on the past as it grows bigger in our lives.

“The Great Gatsby” ends with a famous line, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” There is a lot of that going on in “Clerks III.” Who the characters are now is defined by who they were. They’ve been friends for thirty plus years and that shaped them. This movie explores that shape.

There is also a famous line from William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I felt that one too as I watched this movie. Somewhere I was still 27 year old me watching the first “Clerks” for the first time. I felt connected to that. The characters were also very connected to their pasts. Not only were they directly connected by making an “In movie” movie about their pasts but their actions making the movie were informed by their thirty year history together.

“Clerks III” was also about contemplating time and getting older. That was very obvious as we got to see scenes of all the characters when they were younger. The juxtaposition of seeing someone when they are twenty next to seeing them when they are fifty is always a bit startling. It’s nearly impossible to not contemplate time when you see that.

After watching and liking this movie a thought came into my head. What would this movie mean to a twenty year old watching it right now? As a fifty-six year old who saw the first movie when he was twenty-seven this movie has a distinct feeling to me. It’s celebratory of the past and of time passing. There is plenty of nostalgia to it but it is also about the present and even the future. At least that’s what I see. I wonder what a twenty year old would see? Would they see the same thing? I’m not sure but they might.

There is a scene in an episode of Joan Hickson’s “Miss Marple” (They Do It with Mirrors -1991) that is all about nostalgia. It always gets to me. I first saw it in my early twenties and appreciated it. It takes place at the end of the episode after the mystery was solved. Miss Marple (who is an old woman) is visiting some old friends (two other old women). Someone pulls out a projector and shows them a film they took of the three of them in Paris when they were young. They watched the film with tears in their eyes and it always made me tear up too. I appreciated their feeling of nostalgia and contemplating the past. I hope other twenty year olds can appreciate that too.

There wasn’t an end credit scene but there was and end credit voiceover by the writer/director Kevin Smith. Make sure you stay around for that.

It was back in the winter of 2019-2020 that I started looking to buy a new compact super zoom camera. I had been commuting into NYC a couple of days a week and when I did that I liked to take street photos. As I walked down Seventh Avenue from 32nd Street to 14th Street I’d snap pictures of the people and places along the way.

I also liked to go into the city on some Saturdays during the summer and take street photos in and around Bryant Park. For these Saturdays I would bring whatever super zoom camera I had at the time. These days I have a Canon Powersot SX60 HS. It’s a good camera, gets the job done, and I like it. But it’s also a big camera. It’s around the size of a typical 35MM camera.

I started looking for a smaller compact super zoom camera for my commuting days because I wanted a smaller size camera. I had always carried a bag with me on my commutes but over that winter break in December/January of 2019-2022 I started creating an “Art Go-Bag.” That’s a bag I could carry that had art supplies in it so I could make things on my commute.

Sometimes when I commute into the city it’s during off peak hours. That means fewer trains and longer waits. It was during those waits I liked to make art. I would sit in the train station for half an hour and draw. I’d usually work on some of my art cards.

I ended up buying a messenger style backpack and a couple of flat art supply bags that slipped into it. It all worked well together but the bulkiest thing in there was the camera. The camera fit but took up a bit chunk of room and distended the bag. The bag is a lot wider from front to back than if the camera were not in there. So I started thinking about not caring that camera on my commute and getting a smaller one.

I’m always looking at new cameras online. I like to see what is new and if prices have gone down. From about when digital cameras came out in around the year 2000 until around the late 20-teens cameras usually followed a pattern. The new model would come out, the old model would be discounted, and overall prices for digital cameras would drop a bit from year to year.

There are a couple of things I was looking for from the camera I wanted to carry in my commuter bag. I wanted it to be small, have a big zoom, and have a LCD panel that swiveled. I like the LCD panel to swivel because I enjoy shooting from waist level. That way I can look down at the view finder rather than raising the camera to my eye.

I eventually found that I liked the looks of a Canon Powershot SX740. It’s small enough to be pocketable, has a 40x zoom, and has a swivel LCD. My bigger Canon has a 60x zoom which is a crazy big zoom but I would settle for a 40x zoom for a pocket camera. I found a couple of others that were okay but didn’t have as big a zoom. I like that big zoom for taking street phots so I don’t have to disturb people as I take photos of everyday life.

The main reason I didn’t buy the camera right away back in January of 2020 was that it cost $400 and I didn’t have $400. So I went back to commuting during the new semester that January with my older and larger camera. I was planning on eventually getting the compact one when Covid hit and shut everything down. I began teaching virtually and not commuting.

Now it’s Fall 2022 and I’m back to commuting into the city two days a week. What about that new camera? Did I ever get it? No, I didn’t. I’m still carrying my larger one. A friend even gave me a second camera that is almost the same as the one I have now except that it’s a Nikon Coolpix. But it’s not a compact camera.

The main reason I never got a new camera is that the Powershot SX740 actually went up in price. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because Covid upset the supply chain for digital camera or maybe it’s because everyone carries a phone camera so demand is for a separate camera is low. You’d think low demand would lower a price but I’ve noticed that sometimes when an item goes from a mass market item to a niche item the price rises. I guess the economies of scale are lost and prices go up.

Back in early 2020 the MSRP on the camera was $400 and it still is but you can’t get it for that. It’s sold out on Canon’s website and even on Amazon they rarely have it for sale new. You can get it mint in box on Ebay but it will run you from $500 to $700. I’ve been looking at used ones on eBay and they’ll run you around $400. It’s strange to see this happen in the world of digital cameras.

I don’t even have the money right now to get one but I do occasionally follow the bidding for them on eBay. One popped up a week ago and though not new it was in barely used and in nice shape. It had a “Buy It Now” of around $330 and was also taking offers. If I had the money I would have bought it because I knew it would go fast. Sure enough in just a few hours it was gone. I’ve seen used ones on the site go for that price but they’re usually pretty battered.

I’ve seen non-working models of this camera on eBay too. They’re usually listed “As is” and marked as non-working or for parts only but they still go for $200. I often wonder who buys these broken cameras? A check of the “Items Sold” section of eBay shows that these broken cameras actually do sell. There must be people who buy and repair cameras.

So far I’ve been okay commuting with my old bulky camera this semester. I bought it back in 2015 so I know it well. There has only been one model after it, the SX70 HS and that one has gone up in price too. I paid around $500 for mine and the SX70 HD goes for around $700. What is happening in the world of digital cameras? I don’t know but it’s expensive.

One of my favorite pieces of drawing equipment is the Haff Hatching Machine. I’ve mentioned it before but since no one I know but me has ever used one I’ll describe it. It’s a straight edge (like a ruler) that attaches to a metal arm (a small metal dowel or pole). Also connected to that metal arm is a lever/switch and a dial. Set the dial to between one and five millimeters and every time you hit the switch it moves the straight edge that number of millimeters down the metal arm.

The whole point of this tool is to make perfect parallel lines. Parallel lines when used in a drawing context is called hatching, hence the name of the machine.

I originally bought my Haff back in 1991 or so. There were two models of it. One model had around a nine inch straight edge on it and the other around twelve inches. I think they sold for about $100 and $150 respectively. I opted for the cheaper one. I had no idea what I was going to use it for or if I was even going to use it so why spend the extra money for the larger one? I regretted that eventually.

I’m not sure how much time passed between me buying the Haff and me really using it but as soon as I used it I took to it quickly. As a cartoonist I used it for making tones out of parallel lines in my drawings, mostly for backgrounds. It added a nice design element to my drawing.

I also used it to draw parallel lines for lettering. Back before the digital age I used to hand letter my comic book pages just like everyone else. Though the whole comic book lettering world used something called an “Ames Guide” I found the Haff machine to be vastly superior to it.

But there was a problem. Here is where that regret comes in. A page of comic book original art is ten inches wide. With the straight edge on the Haff only being nine inches wide I couldn’t ever span the width of a page with a single line. It’s not like I had to do that very often but when I did it was an inconvenience. I wished I had bought the larger one but I never did see a Haff machine again.

The Haff got another life in about 2015 when I started making big ink drawings. I started using the Haff to make big patches of parallel lines in various spots of my big ink drawings. If I needed a pattern in the drawing I could count on the Haff to help me make one. I use it to this day whenever I make a big ink drawing. I still use it for other tasks too such as for the lettering on my cartoon art cards.

My Haff machine has been running a little rough over the last few years. The mechanism that moves the straight edge up the little arm sometimes sticks. I’m not sure why. I’ve taken the mechanism apart before to dust it out but that seems to do nothing. I usually end up washing the metal pole with some 409 and that stops the problem for a while but it still makes me nervous.

Over the years I’ve kept my eyes open for the larger Haff machine. Being that it’s a tool from back in the days before computers took over the business of drafting and mechanical drawing it’s not like they were making new ones. Plus it was made in Germany and I don’t think there was ever that many of them in the USA. The time I bought mine was the only time I’ve ever seen one in person.

As an aside I’ve showed off the Haff on my YouTube channel a few times over the years and one of my viewers recognized it. He said the his grandfather had one and mine was the only other one he had ever seen. That made me like his grandfather sight unseen.

I’ve checked eBay many times for the Haff Hatching Machine. Always to no avail. The regular internet had some traces of it but they were all years old sales at various auction sites. Nothing was ever current. I couldn’t even find it on a site called the Museum of Old Drafting Tools.

That changed this week. I hadn’t done a search on eBay in a while so I decided to give it a go. There was not only one of them there were three of them. That’s right there were three Haff machines on sale and they were all the big one. The prices varied: $135, $180, and $500. I have never seen one of them for sale before and now there are three.

The problem is that I just bought a new slider scanner. That ran me about $600 so I don’t have the money for a Haff machine at the moment. There is also no way that I’m spending $500 on one so one of the three is out of bounds anyway.

It’s funny because I often have buyer’s remorse when spending a lot of money on equipment. I like to ask myself “What new things can I do with this equipment?” and have a good answer to that question. Sometimes I don’t though. My new $600 slide scanner is replacing my old malfunctioning slide scanner. I had to spend the money just to do the stuff I could always do. That’s often disappointing.

With a new slightly larger Haff machine can I really do anything new? I don’t think so but I don’t really know. But if the old ones stops working correctly I’d like to have another. I might have to get one now.

As I’m writing this I checked ebay again and the $135 dollar one has been sold. Now we’re down to just one. So I just sent an offer of $100. That’s something you can do on eBay. He can accept my offer or make a counter offer. Look at that. He made a counter offer of $150. Now I’ll send one for $125. We’ll have to see what happens.

Epilogue: The seller didn’t go for my offer and that was the end of that. Maybe I’ll get one some other day.